Tehran University Medical Journal

Background: Bacterial meningitis is a fatal disease with high mortality and morbidity that needs emergency management. But due to nonspecific signs and symptoms it&aposs diagnosis in children is difficult. Recently procalcitonin has been used for diagnosis of serious bacterial infections like bacterial meningitis. We conducted a prospective study in children for evaluation of procalcitonin in differential diagnosis of acute bacterial and viral meningitis.

Materials and Methods: In a prospective process research, we measured CSF procalcitonin levels in 43 children older than two months referred to Markaz Tebbi hospital. According to the results of universal PCR the patients were divided into two groups: bacterial meningitis (n=11) and nonbacterial meningitis (n=32). To analysis the results, Mann-Whitney test was used.

Results: CSF procalcitonin level in bacterial meningitis was significantly higher than viral meningitis (1.72±0.9 ng/ml and 0.71±0.04ng/ml respectively,Pvalue= 0.00). A serum procalcitonin level >0.5 ng/ml had high sensitivity and specificity ( 90.1% and 97.1% respectively) in the diagnosis of bacterial meningitis.

Conclusion: CSF procalcitonin level seems to be a valuable marker in differentiating between bacterial and viral meningitis.