Abstract
Brucellosis is the most common zoonotic infection and is still endemic in many parts of the world.
Brucella is a Gram-negative, nonmotile, facultative aerobic coccobacillus. It possesses a unique ability to avoid the immune system and involves almost every organ system. The precise mechanisms by which Brucella enters the central nervous system (CNS) are unknown; probably, the bacteria may affect the CNS directly or indirectly causing meningitis or meningoencephalitis that can present with an acute or chronic onset and can occur either as the only site of infection or in the context of a systemic disease. Diagnostic criteria of Brucella meningitis are problematic and based on clinical features and laboratory exams on blood and cerebral fluid. The prognosis is better than other forms of chronic meningitis and the mortality is generally low, but the incidence of minor sequelae is high and will increase in case of a delay in treatment; this is done with tetracycline or doxycycline and streptomycin or rifampin or both.
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Abbreviations
- CNS:
-
Central nervous system
- CSF:
-
Cerebrospinal fluid
- MAPK:
-
Mitogen-activated protein kinases
- MMP-9:
-
Matrix metalloproteinases-9
- RBT:
-
Rose Bengal test
- STA:
-
Standard tube agglutination
- TMP/SMZ:
-
Trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole
- TNF-α:
-
Tumor necrosis factor-α
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Somma, T., Caggiano, C., Tedeschi, E., Turgut, A.T., Faella, F. (2016). Brucella Meningitis. In: Turgut, M., Haddad, F., de Divitiis, O. (eds) Neurobrucellosis. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24639-0_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24639-0_5
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