Meningitis: how you can get infected and after what time it is able to manifest

Meningitis is the inflammatory process, which is almost always triggered by an infectious agent in the coat covering the brain. Not all microbes can trigger this disease, but only those viruses, bacteria, fungi or protozoa that have a particular aggressiveness in relation to the structures of the central nervous system.

Bacterial meningitis: how can I get infected?

Such an inflammatory process is more common than a viral one, it is more difficult and more likely to leave behind various consequences. Depending on the route of infection, bacterial meningitis can be of two types:

1) Primary, caused most often by meningococcus, less often - pneumococcus or hemophilic rod. In this case, the microbe that caused the disease gets to the person (most often these are children) by airborne droplets from:

- bacterium carrier, that is, a completely healthy person, in which the bacterium "lives" in the nasopharynx;

- a patient with meningococcal nasopharyngitis: in this case, a person may feel slight malaise, a slight fever, accompanied by pain in the throat and secretion of mucopurulent snot;

- a patient with meningococcal meningitis or meningococcemia.

Pay attention: the meningitis from a patient who tolerates the same disease, you can get infected only if it is caused by meningococcus.

2) If you mean secondary meningitis - how can you get infected? By this term is meant a disease that has arisen as a complication of another purulent process. In this case, the infection penetrates to the brain:

- from the ears - with purulent otitis;

- from the nasal cavity - with bacterial rhinitis;

- from the paranasal sinuses - with fronts, sinusitis, etmoiditis;

- with an open wound of the cranial cavity;

- with pneumonia, sepsis - carried by blood.

Such a meningitis is not contagious, it is unrealistic to "transfer" to another.

Viral meningitis: how can you get infected?

1) By airborne droplets: the viruses of chicken pox, herpes simplex, mumps, enteroviruses "fly in".

2) Through dirty hands and the use of insufficiently thermally processed products. So there is an enterovirus, adenovirus, some other meningitis.

3) The virus can get sexually: it mainly refers to the herpes simplex virus.

4) If a healthy person injures an element of the rash of the patient and applies to the skin its contents (with infection caused by the herpes simplex virus).

5) Some viruses can penetrate the placenta or through the birth canal, causing disease in newborn babies.

6) Other viruses are transmitted to humans when bitten by insects and arthropods.

Fungal meningitis: how can I get infected?

This type of disease rarely occurs in people with a healthy immune system. If it is found out that the fungus was the cause of the disease, it is necessary to donate blood for the determination of antibodies to HIV, and if this analysis is negative (while a person does not undergo chemotherapy and does not treat the systemic disease with hormones), it is necessary to examine the immunogram.

The incubation period of meningitis in children and adults is different: it all depends on which microbe caused the disease. Usually from infection to the appearance of the first symptoms runs from two to ten days (an average of 5-7 days).

How to protect yourself from meningitis?

1. Observance of elementary hygienic rules.
2. Do not use shared utensils and toothbrushes.
3. Do not swallow water from the pool when swimming.
4. Teach a child not to communicate with coughing, sneezing people and those who complain of a fever. If necessary, wear a mask.
5. Do not drink unboiled water and milk, look at the shelf life of the products.

Since there are many different types of disease, the vaccination against meningitis includes:

1. Inoculations from measles, mumps, rubella, hemophilia infection are vaccines that are mandatory for all children to do.

2. Inoculations from meningococcus and pneumococcus are additional protection. If the child is often sick, is on a dispensary record with a neurologist, it is advisable before you take him to a kindergarten, to consult an infectious disease specialist about the need to make this vaccination.

From other types of microbes that can cause meningitis, vaccinations are not invented, so it is very important to learn to follow all of the above rules for the prevention of this disease.