Meningitis- Diagnosis and Molecular Epidemiology

Diagnosis of meningococcal disease is essential for institution of early treatment to reduce the mortality and complications of this serious infection. This work explores and covers cultural and non-cultural techniques on cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) or blood specimens from persons suffering from meningococcal disease. Non-cultural techniques for the diagnosis of the disease in this work included common serological tests for the detection of anti-meningococcal antibodies or bacterial antigens in cerebrospinal fluid. With rapid antigen detection methods include Co-agglutination (COA) and latex agglutination. Also ELISA was used for diagnosis of Acute Bacterial Meningitis. Furthermore Molecular techniques have been achieved for the diagnosis of meningococcal disease and the detection of bacteria DNA from body fluid (CSF, plasma or serum). The sensitivity and specificity of this test vary compared with Grams stain and cultural techniques Epidemiological investigations of meningococcal disease was utilize for classification schemes based on differences among meningococcal cell envelope molecules.