Compartmentalized HIV-1 replication within the central nervous system (CNS) likely provides a foundation for neurocognitive impairment and a potentially important tissue reservoir. The timing of emergence and character of this local CNS replication has not been defined in a population of subjects. We examined the frequency of elevated cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) HIV-1 RNA concentration, the natur...

A healthy, immunocompetent 15-year-old girl was admitted to our hospital with headache, fever, and loss of consciousness after vomiting. The vomiting disturbance improved promptly without any specific treatment. While there meningism, due the persistent headache a CSF examination performed on fourth day admission, which revealed lymphocytic pleocytosis, varicella-zoster virus (VZV) DNA detected...

BACKGROUND Enteroviruses (EV) are the main aetiological agents of aseptic meningitis in children and a common cause of febrile illnesses in young infants in summer. A rapid diagnosis is essential to rule out other conditions. Real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay performed in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) has proved to be a very fast and useful tool. METHODS We ...

Encephalitis is an inflammation of the brain. The diagnosis of encephalitis can be established only by microscopic examination of brain tissue, and similarly the etiology is established only by the recovery from or the demonstration in brain tissue of an infectious agent. In clinical practice, however, the diagnosis of encephalitis frequently is based on neurologic manifestations, and the etiol...

BACKGROUND The most common cause of Lyme neuroborreliosis in Europe is Borrelia garinii, followed by Borrelia afzelii. However, no series describing patients with culture-confirmed cases of Lyme neuroborreliosis have been published, and no comparison of findings for patients with B. garinii and B. afzelii isolated from cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) has been reported. METHODS All adult patients id...

To the Editor: Acute encephalitis/encephalopathy associated with human metapneumovirus (HMPV) has been documented in children (1–3). Recently, Fok et al. (4) described an encephalitis case in an adult but were unable to test cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) for HMPV. Following authors’ recommendations, we performed diagnostic testing on the CSF of an adult with HMPV-associated encephalitis. A previous...

Bovine herpesvirus 5 (BoHV-5) meningoencephalitis is one of the main causes of mortality by encephalopathy in Brazilian cattle herds. However, the neurological signs observed are common to several encephalopathies and do not contribute decisively to a diagnosis. In order to verify hematological and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) changes, blood and CSF samples from naturally and experimentally infect...

OBJECTIVES To assess the clinical categories, laboratory, radiological findings, and treatment outcomes of patients with neurobrucellosis. METHODS This retrospective study was designed at the Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology Department, Faculty of Medicine of Gaziantep University, Gaziantep, Turkey between 2003 and 2006. In this period, 300 patients with brucellosis were diagnose...

Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection of the central nervous system (CNS) can lead to the development of HIV-1-associated dementia (HAD). We examined the virological characteristics of HIV-1 in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of HAD subjects to explore the association between independent viral replication in the CNS and the development of overt dementia. We found that genetically ...