title: A new diagnostic scoring for discrimination of tuberculous and bacterial meningitis on the basis of clinical and laboratory findings.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The aim of this study was to develop a new diagnostic index (DI) on the basis of clinical and laboratory findings including serum C-reactive protein (CRP) for tuberculous meningitis (TM) and bacterial meningitis (BM).
  
  
  METHODS
  During a 7-year period, 96 adult patients with meningitis (30 with TM and 66 with BM) were studied retrospectively. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed to investigate the diagnostic value of clinical and laboratory parameters as independent predictors on discrimination of tuberculous from BM patients.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Six features predictive for diagnosis including age, CSF leukocyte count, PML dominance, length of illness, serum CRP level and blood WBC count were used. The DI model developed from these features had very high sensitivity and specificity rates of 100.0 and 95.4%, respectively. The sensitivity and speciﬁcity rates were 97.4 and 100%, respectively, in microbiologically proven cases.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our results suggested that this new DI which consists of simple clinical and laboratory parameters had the power to discriminate adult patients with documented tuberculous and BM (excluding Brucella meningitis). It should, however, be tested in prospective studies.
authors: Department of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology, Inonu University Faculty of Medicine, Malatya, Turkey. dryasemin@hotmail.com
authors: Yasemin
authors: Y
authors: Ersoy
authors: Funda
authors: F
authors: Yetkin
authors: Mehmet Refik
authors: MR
authors: Bayraktar
authors: Yuksel
authors: Y
authors: Ersoy
authors: Saim
authors: S
authors: Yologlu
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002097:C-Reactive Protein; D016009:Chi-Square Distribution; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D003955:Diagnostic Tests, Routine; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007249:Inflammation / Q000097:blood; D007958:Leukocyte Count; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D016920:Meningitis, Bacterial / Q000097:blood / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000473:pathology; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D014397:Tuberculosis, Pulmonary / Q000097:blood / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000473:pathology
chemical_list: D002097:C-Reactive Protein