Listeria monocytogenes Meningitis in Adults:

Copyright © 2013 Olga Dzupova et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Background. Listeria monocytogenes (LM) is currently the third most frequent pathogen of bacterial meningitis in adults.Methods. A prospective study of patients with LM meningitis in a Czech tertiary care hospital, carried out from 1997 to 2012. Results. Thirty-one patients were diagnosed with LM meningitis, which was 7 % of a total of 440 adult patients with acute bacterial meningitis (ABM) over a 16-year period.Theirmedian age was 63 years, range 26–80 years. Nineteen patients (61%) had underlying immunocompromising comorbidity; 15 patients (48%) were older than 65 years. Fourteen patients (45%) had arterial hypertension. The typical triad of fever, neck stiffness, and altered mental status was present in 21 patients (68%). The median count of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leukocytes was 680