What are the symptoms of epidemic meningitis?

Epidemic encephalitis is an acute infectious disease caused by bacterial infection. Encephalitis can be indirectly transmitted to other people. It rarely occurs in adults, but frequently in children. This is because encephalitis bacteria are very dangerous and can be spread directly through vomit, saliva in coughs, and body secretions. Therefore, most children with encephalitis need to be isolated to prevent encephalitis from getting out of control and causing many complications to the body. Patients with epidemic encephalitis should pay attention to early detection and early treatment, because most patients with this disease will have severe shock, coma, cold limbs, and loss of consciousness. Early treatment is to prevent the aggravation of the disease and avoid continued deterioration of the disease and burden on the body.

How can children prevent epidemic meningitis?

When healthy children inhale bacteria-carrying dust, the pathogens first invade the respiratory mucosa, causing cold symptoms such as fever, cough, and runny nose. Some children are controlled during the upper respiratory tract infection period. If not, the bacteria enter the blood circulation and form bacteremia.

The symptoms at this time are high fever, nausea, vomiting, and the appearance of petechiae and ecchymosis on the skin, which are the characteristics of this disease, mainly distributed in areas that are easily subjected to pressure, such as shoulders, elbows, and buttocks. The pathogens can eventually invade the meninges and develop into meningitis, with symptoms such as meningeal irritation and increased intracranial pressure, such as irritability or drowsiness, convulsions, increased headache, frequent vomiting, and persistent high fever. Infants will show symptoms such as refusal to feed, staring, screaming, a full anterior fontanelle, and signs of meningeal irritation.

Fulminant meningococcal disease may cause symptoms of acute adrenal cortical insufficiency due to adrenal cortical hemorrhage, such as severe shock, pale complexion, cold limbs, undetectable pulse, decreased or unmeasurable blood pressure, rapid heart rate, dull heart sounds, and coma. If discovered and treated early, the disease has a high cure rate.

Most deaths are of the fulminant type, with the patient dying from severe shock or brain herniation within a short period of time. Children with common type of disease can be completely cured if they receive appropriate treatment in the early stage. Symptoms in infancy are often atypical and difficult to diagnose. If treatment is delayed, even if the baby survives, sequelae are likely to occur.

Common complications of epidemic meningitis are arthritis and subdural effusion or abscess. The sequelae include deafness, blindness, limb paralysis, intellectual and mental changes, hydrocephalus, etc.

Comprehensive measures are needed to prevent epidemic meningitis, and patients should be detected, diagnosed, treated and isolated early. During the epidemic season (February-April) and in certain areas, we must be alert to the occurrence of epidemic meningitis and never treat it as just a cold, so as not to delay the disease. If close contacts have symptoms of upper respiratory tract infection or bleeding spots on the skin, they should be treated according to this disease.

In epidemic areas, contacts should be given drug prevention. Co-sulfamethoxazole can be used, 50 mg per kilogram of body weight per day, orally in two divided doses. The group A meningococcal polysaccharide vaccine currently used in some areas has a certain preventive effect on this disease.