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Meningitis | ||||||||
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Meningitis is a life threatening disease in which a thin lining (membrane) covering the spinal cord and brain are affected. This dreadful disease mostly attacks infants and small children. Meningitis is able to cause severe brain damage or if a person with this disease is not treated within twenty-four to seventy-two hours it may lead to death. There are different types of symptoms for meningitis. The basic symptoms are headaches, fever, vomiting, stiff neck, back pain, muscle aches, and leg pains. Additional symptoms may include listlessness, irritability, drowsiness, dislike of bright lights, rashes, or even impaired consciousness. All of these symptoms may lead to stupor and coma. A sign of meningitis is that you get ill quickly. It is more common for babies to get meningitis than adults. The symptoms maybe fever, nausea, or vomiting. They might also have a loss of appetite and sleepiness. Babies could have blotchy or pale skin. Other symptoms are moaning cry when handled and uncontrollable jerking. Symptoms for babies may even include a floppy body. Not all different types of meningitis have a cure. Bacterial meningitis is treated with sulfa drugs and antibiotics. These antibiotics include penicillin, ampicillin, and cephalosporin. Tuberculous meningitis is treated with streptomycin and antituberculous. There is no effective treatment for viral meningitis though. Only your immune system can fight viral meningitis. Rest and fluids are used to recover from viral meningitis usually. The prognosis of meningitis could be negative or positive. Normally most people recover completely from this disease. However, deafness, paralysis, or muscle weakness could be the result. Mental retardation and blindness might also occur because of meningitis. The prognosis may also be severe brain damage or even death. We can not prevent all types of meningitis unfortunately. Some forms of viral and bacterial meningitis are contagious, so you can avoid people with contagious meningitis. Viral meningitis can be spread through people to people contact or insects. Doctors give the antibiotic rifampin to those who come in close contact with people who has neisseria meningitidus and Haemophilius influenzae type b. There are vaccines to prevent certain types of meningitis. Infants can be vaccinated to avoid Haemophilius influenzae type b. Unfortunately, there is no found ways to prevent viral meningitis. One in ten people carry the bacteria that causes meningitis usually in the back of the throat. However, the bacteria does not normally pass into the bloodstream. Meningitis is caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi, and microbes. Viral meningitis is caused by a number of different viruses. Most people are exposed to the viruses that cause viral meningitis, but few develop viral meningitis. People with sickle-cell anemia have more of a risk to get meningitis. Children have a greater risk of receiving viral meningitis if they have mumps or herpes virus infection. Maybe in the future, we can create a vaccination to prevent all types of meningitis so we do not have to worry about it like other diseases now. Bibliography
Meningitis © 1997 Jacob Eapen. |