Serous meningitis: symptoms in children, diagnosis, prevention

About that there is such a disease as meningitis, everyone has heard. Some associate his appearance purely with hypothermia (especially the head) or with infection by airborne droplets. Is it so? How you can get sick, we'll see below.

Types of meningitis

The disease can be caused by bacteria, viruses, rarely - protozoa. Establish an accurate diagnosis and identify the microbe that caused the disease, can only be using a lumbar puncture. In this case, an hour after its capture, it will presumably be known that meningitis is purulent or serous.

A purulent process is caused in 99% of cases by bacteria; If serous meningitis, symptoms in children can arise due to the penetration into the body, and then to the brain shell of certain specific bacteria, a huge number of viruses, fungi.

The mechanism of getting the virus into the body

Viruses that cause serous meningitis (symptoms in children, usually severe) penetrate the body in various ways. Sometimes this process occurs after a short time, immediately after minor manifestations of acute respiratory viral infection. In some cases, meningitis can be a complication of other viral diseases (usually measles, chicken pox, rubella).

Viruses penetrate the body in such ways:

- airborne: herpes viruses, cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus, rubella, measles, mumps, chicken pox, enteroviruses, ARVI group;

- Sexually transmitted: herpes simplex virus;

- through the placenta or in childbirth: herpes simplex virus;

- when using insufficiently thermally processed products and through dirty hands: enteroviruses;

- when the contents of the bubbles hit the wounds on the skin: herpes simplex viruses.

Serous meningitis can be caused by specific bacteria. They also enter the body in various ways: thus, the mycobacterium tuberculosis penetrates the airborne way, and leptospira - from infected mouse, rat feces through the wounds on the skin.

Serous meningitis: symptoms in children

After infection, some time passes (usually about a week), then symptoms of a viral disease appear:

• Cough, runny nose, conjunctivitis, perspiration and sore throat - if the disease is caused by one of the enteroviruses or a microbe from the ARVI group;
• Elevated body temperature - when any of the viruses hit;
• Rash - is typical for chickenpox, herpes simplex, shingles , measles, rubella, only in each case the elements of the rash will be different;
• A sore throat, an increase in a large number of lymph nodes - with the entry of the Epstein-Barr virus or cytomegalovirus.

If serous meningitis is caused by a leptospira or tubercle bacillus, the symptoms of these diseases will initially appear. Then, in a few days, if the virus has overcome the defense of the brain, serous meningitis develops. Symptoms in children appear as follows:

- the body temperature rises to higher values, it becomes difficult to knock it down;

- the head starts to hurt strongly: this pain more often does not have certain localization, amplifies in a sitting and standing position (lying lighter), and also with loud sounds and bright light;

- nausea and vomiting;

- weakness, drowsiness up to the state when the child becomes impossible to wake up;

- there may be seizures with loss of consciousness (this is typical of herpetic meningitis, which is very dangerous for life);

- inadequacy, delirium, hallucinations;

- for enteroviral meningitis is characterized by a reddish small-scale rash throughout the body.

If the meningitis has developed in a very small child, there is a bulging of a large fontanel, a monotonous crying, a kid resists being taken in his arms.

Diagnosis of meningitis

The diagnosis can be made only by the results of a lumbar puncture. This is not such a dangerous manipulation, it does not need to pierce the spinal cord. But the benefits of it are beyond doubt:

• After it becomes easier, as the pressure of the cerebrospinal fluid decreases;
• Only on the basis of this analysis, it is possible to distinguish viral meningitis from purulent immediately, and later - to obtain the full result of a bacteriological or virological study, through which it will be clear what the causative agent of the disease is called and how it can be killed;
• Determine the initial therapy, which can be selected on the basis of a comparison of the severity of the condition and the level of inflammation, which is determined in the cerebrospinal fluid.

How to protect yourself from meningitis?

- observe the rules of personal hygiene;

- Encourage the child to understand that there is no need to communicate with a coughing or sneezing person;

- take as a habit adults in the family with signs of a cold to wear a mask;

- use only boiled or bottled water, boiled milk;

- It is advisable to be examined before pregnancy by TORCH-group, and during it in every possible way to be protected from colds, to dress on weather, to wash hands before meal and after trips in transport.

There is currently no vaccination for serous meningitis.