What are the pathogens of meningitis?

Meningitis is a life-threatening disease that is not joking. Signs of it should everyone know, and also remember that many of both purulent and viral diseases can be complicated by the development of inflammation of the membranes of the brain. Therefore, you need to be treated on time, performing all the doctor's prescriptions.

The causative agents of meningitis are many viruses, bacteria, some fungi and protozoa. The first cause a serous form of the disease, which proceeds somewhat more easily than purulent, which is caused by the second. Fungi can provoke the disease in the event that the immunity is greatly reduced.

What can be the causative agents of meningitis and how do they get to the meninges?

1. Bacteria. There are a lot of them. Some of them are very aggressive, "fly" by airborne droplets, causing the disease after the microbe from the nasopharynx reaches the brain. This is the primary meningitis, and it can be provoked by three bacteria: meningococcus, pneumococcus and hemophilus influenza.

In these cases, at first there is a slight malaise, a runny nose, as with ARVI (the only difference is that a cold with white or yellowish discharge from the nose). Then deterioration develops rapidly, a characteristic rash often appears, which does not disappear when pressure is applied to the stains with glass, other symptoms of meningitis appear .

The causative agents of meningitis of secondary purulent are both staphylococcus, pneumococcus, and enterococcus, and Escherichia coli, and many other microbes. They fall on the shell of the brain from the ear, sinuses of the nose in their inflammation, from such foci as phlegmon, furuncle, carbuncle. Bacteria are carried by blood during sepsis.

In these cases, first develops purulent disease, which has its own characteristic symptoms: pain, fever, purulent discharge. Only then (usually takes more than 7 days) there are signs of meningitis.

2. Pathogens of meningitis serous. These are various viruses: influenza, chicken pox, enterovirus infection, rubella, shingles, mononucleosis and others.

They get to the person in all possible ways. The main one is airborne. This is how most viruses are transmitted, including those (they are called enteroviruses) that cause notorious outbreaks in children's camps, orchards. Meningitis in Moscow, which was recently talked about very much, was also provoked by them.

When does meningitis occur?

This requires several conditions:

- that the microbe was aggressive enough;

- that the human body was weakened by illness or not sufficiently "trained" (as is the case with children);

- an even greater chance of "earning" meningitis, when a person has a disease of the central nervous system: cysts in the brain, cerebral palsy, and so on.

That is, not always a microbe that can cause meningitis, it really causes.

What is the most dangerous causative agent of meningitis?

Herpes viruses (cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus, herpes simplex viruses of two types, varicella-zoster virus) cause the most severe course and consequences of the disease.

In the case of purulent meningitis, everyone is extremely dangerous, each in his own way. So, meningococcus can, among other things, penetrate into the bloodstream and cause hemorrhages in the brain and internal organs. Pneumococcus, for example, is able to form a purulent "cap" on the brain, because of which it is very difficult to cure it.

Therefore, it is important to determine which causative agent of meningitis caused the disease, not only in terms of what drugs it is best to treat, but also about the prognosis of the course of the disease.