1 The incidence and mortality rates of bacterial meningitis vary according to the geographical region, the type of pathogen and the age groups. Although its incidence has diminished due to the development of polysaccharide and conjugate vaccines in recent years, 1.2 million cases of bacterial meningitis is estimated to occur annually worldwide. While SO-BMT seems to be a more efficient method than bacterial culturing to determine the pathogens that most commonly cause bacterial meningitis in adults, further studies conducted on larger populations are needed in order to assess its efficiency and uses.īacterial meningitis is a serious infectious disease that can be fatal in children and in adults. There was no sample in which the CSF culture was positive although the SO-BMT was negative. The culture and the SO-BMT were negative in 23 of the CSF samples. pneumoniae was both isolated in the CSF culture and detected in the SO-BMT. pneumoniae was detected in 33 of the samples (97.05%), while Neisseria meningitidis was found in 1 sample (2.95%). The CSF samples of 34 patients (59.6%) were positive according to the SO-BMT and S. Growth was observed in the CSF cultures of 10 out of the 57 patients included in the study (17.5%) and Streptococcus pneumoniae was isolated in all of them. The diagnosis of bacterial meningitis was made based on the clinical findings, laboratory test anomalies, CSF analysis results, and the radiological images.

For the purposes of this study, patients with acute bacterial meningitis treated at the Dicle University Medical Faculty Hospital, Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology Clinic between December 2009 and April 2012 were retrospectively evaluated. Our aim in this study is to compare the standard culture method with the multiplex PCR and the Speed-Oligo ® Bacterial Meningitis Test (SO-BMT) – a hybridization-based molecular test method – during the CSF examination of the patients with the pre-diagnosis of acute bacterial meningitis.

Pneumococcal meningitis csf findings