Health News Study Reveals Bacterial Meningitis's Potential for Neurological Damage in Children

 Study Reveals Bacterial Meningitis's Potential for Neurological Damage in Children

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Stockholm [Sweden], January 21 (ANI): One in every three children with bacterial meningitis has irreparable neurological abnormalities as a result of the infection.

This is according to a recent epidemiological study conducted by the Karolinska Institutet and published in the top medical journal JAMA Network Open.

For the first time, researchers have pinpointed the lasting health effects of bacterial meningitis, shedding light on the challenges posed by this infection, which is currently treated with antibiotics but often leaves irreversible neurological damage. The severity of consequences is particularly pronounced when children are affected, leading to lifelong disabilities that significantly burden both individuals and society.

Federico Iovino, an associate professor in Medical Microbiology at the Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, and one of the study's authors, emphasized the profound impact on families when young children experience impaired cognition, motor disabilities, or vision and hearing loss due to bacterial meningitis.

By delving into data from the Swedish quality register on bacterial meningitis spanning from 1987 to 2021, the researchers compared over 3,500 individuals who had contracted bacterial meningitis as children with more than 32,000 matched controls from the general population, tracking them for an average of over 23 years.

The findings revealed that individuals diagnosed with bacterial meningitis consistently exhibited a higher prevalence of neurological disabilities, including cognitive impairment, seizures, visual or hearing impairment, motor impairment, behavioral disorders, or structural damage to the head.

The risk was notably elevated for structural head injuries - 26 times the risk, hearing impairment - almost eight times the risk, and motor impairment - almost five times the risk.

Approximately one in three people affected by bacterial meningitis experienced at least one neurological impairment, in contrast to one in ten among the control group.

"This shows that even after the bacterial infection is cured, many people suffer from neurological impairment afterward," said Federico Iovino.

With the identification of the long-term effects of bacterial meningitis, Iovino and his colleagues are now focusing on developing treatments to protect neurons in the brain during the critical period before antibiotics take full effect. Promising data from human neurons have been obtained, and the research is entering a preclinical phase with animal models. The ultimate goal is to translate these findings into clinical applications within the next few years, offering hope for mitigating the enduring impact of bacterial meningitis on individuals' neurological health.

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