Meningitis

Meningitis is an infection that causes inflammation of the membranes covering the brain and spinal cord. Non-bacterial meningitis is often referred to as "aseptic meningitis." Bacterial meningitis may be referred to as "purulent meningitis."

• Meningitis - cryptococcal
• Syphilitic aseptic meningitis
• Meningitis - H. influenza
• Meningitis - meningococcal
• Meningitis - pneumococcal
• Meningitis - staphylococcal
• Meningitis - tuberculosis
• Aseptic meningitis
• Meningitis gram negative
• Carcinomatous meningitis (meningitis due to cancer)
• Acute bacterial meningitis is a true medical emergency, and requires immediate hospital-based treatment. Bacterial strains that cause meningitis include Streptococcus pneumonia, Haemophilus influenza, Neisseria meningitides (meningococcus), Listeria monocytogenes, and many other types of bacteria. In the U.S. almost 20,000 cases of bacterial meningitis occur yearly.

Viral Meningitis is milder and occurs more often than bacterial meningitis. It usually develops in the late summer and early fall, often affects children and adults under 30. Seventy percent of the infections occur in children under the age of 5. Most Viral Meningitis is associated with enteroviruses, which are viruses that commonly cause intestinal illness.

However, many other types of viruses can also cause meningitis. For example, Viral Meningitis may occur as a complication in people with genital herpes. Recently, West Nile virus spread by mosquito bites has become a cause of Viral Meningitis in most of the U.S. In addition to causing Viral Meningitis, West Nile virus may cause encephalitis in some patients and a polio-like syndrome in others.

• Fever and chills
• Severe headache
• Nausea and vomiting
• Stiff neck (meningismus)
• Sensitivity to light (photophobia)
• Mental status changes

Additional symptoms that may be associated with this disease:

• Decreased consciousness
• Rapid breathing
• Agitation
• Opisthotonos (severe neck stiffness, ultimately resulting in a characteristic arched posture-seen in infants or small children)
• Bulging fontanelles (the soft spots in a baby's skull may bulge)
• Poor feeding or irritability in children
• Meningitis is an important cause of fever in newborn children. For this reason, a lumbar puncture is often done on newborns who have a fever of uncertain origin.

• Lumbar puncture with CSF glucose measurement and CSF cell count
• Gram-stain and culture of CSF (cerebral spinal fluid)
• Chest x-ray to look for other sites of infection
• Head CT scan looking for hydrocephalus, abscess or deep swelling

• Hearing loss or deafness
• Brain damage
• Loss of vision
• Hydrocephalus

It's highly recommended household contacts and people with close contact with individuals with meningococcal meningitis receive preventative antibiotics to avoid becoming infected themselves.

Some communities conduct vaccination campaigns following an outbreak of meningococcal meningitis. Military recruits are routinely vaccinated against this form of meningitis because of its high rate of occurrence.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College Health Assn encourage college students (particularly freshmen living in dorms) to consider being vaccinated with the meningococcal vaccine.

With the arrival of late summer and early fall Spinal Meningitis raises its ugly head to search for preys, its victims are often children below five and adults below thirty. Spinal Meningitis is a lay-term for inflammation of the meninges-membranes covering the brain and spinal cord. It affects the brain and spine simultaneously.

Bacterial Meningitis may show some extra symptoms like mental status changes, Dementia, twitching, perturbation, skin rashes and protrusive soft skull spots in case of babies.

Common meningitis disease diagnosis tools the doctor uses for spinal meningitis include a Lumbar Puncture to inspect cerebrospinal fluid, bacterial culture, chest X-ray and a CT scan of the brain to locate meningitis disease damage.

Prevention is always better than cure. Thanks to administration of drugs and vaccines like Haemophilus vaccine, Meningococcal vaccine and Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine you can prevent some types of Spinal Meningitis.

This is actually for bacterial meningitis... sorry-

• About 20,000 deaths from meningitis in Africa 2002 (The World Health Report, WHO, 2004)
• About 18,000 deaths from meningitis from meningitis in The Americas 2002 (The World Health Report, WHO, 2004)
• About 73,000 deaths from meningitis from meningitis in South East Asia 2002 (The World Health Report, WHO, 2004)
• About 15,000 deaths from meningitis from meningitis in Europe 2002 (The World Health Report, WHO, 2004)
• About 25,000 deaths from meningitis from meningitis in Eastern Mediterranean 2002 (The World Health Report, WHO, 2004)
• About 20,000 deaths from meningitis from meningitis in Western Pacific 2002 (The World Health Report, WHO, 2004)