Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News & Views
  • Published:

Infectious disease

Do steroids benefit patients with bacterial meningitis?

Bacterial meningitis causes substantial neurological morbidity and mortality worldwide. The use of corticosteroids as adjunctive therapy to antibiotics has been studied in clinical trials and debated for decades. A new meta-analysis attempts to reconcile some of the disparate findings from trials in this field.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Buy this article

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

  1. Hsu, H. E. et al. Effect of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine on pneumococcal meningitis. N. Engl. J. Med. 360, 244–256 (2009).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  2. Murray, D. J., Lopez, A. D., Mathers, C. D. & Stein, C. The Global Burden of Disease 2000 project: aims, methods and data sources. World Health Organization [online], (2001).

    Google Scholar 

  3. van de Beek, D. et al. Adjunctive dexamethasone in bacterial meningitis: a meta-analysis of individual patient data. Lancet Neurol. 9, 254–263 (2010).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  4. Quagliarello, V. J. & Scheld, W. M. Treatment of bacterial meningitis. N. Engl. J. Med. 336, 708–716 (1997).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. van de Beek, D., de Gans, J., Tunkel, A. R. & Wijdicks, E. F. Community acquired bacterial meningitis in adults. N. Engl. J. Med. 354, 44–53 (2006).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Tauber, M. G., Khayam-Bashi, H. & Sande, M. A. Effects of ampicillin and corticosteroids on brain water content, cerebrospinal fluid pressure, and cerebrospinal fluid lactate levels in experimental pneumococcal meningitis. J. Infect. Dis. 151, 528–534 (1985).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. van de Beek, D., de Gans, J., McIntyre, P. & Prasad, K. Corticosteroids for acute bacterial meningitis. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Issue 1. Art. No.: CD004405. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD004405.pub2 (2007).

  8. Scarborough, M. et al. Corticosteroids for bacterial meningitis in adults in sub-Saharan Africa. N. Engl. J. Med. 357, 2441–2450 (2007).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  9. Mai, N. T. et al. Dexamethasone in Vietnamese adolescents and adults with bacterial meningitis. N. Engl. J. Med. 357, 2431–2440 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Kent, D. M. & Lindenauer, P. K. Aggregating and disaggregating patients in clinical trials and their subgroup analyses. Ann. Intern. Med. 153, 51–52 (2010).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Vincent Quagliarello.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Quagliarello, V., Scheld, W. Do steroids benefit patients with bacterial meningitis?. Nat Rev Neurol 6, 529–530 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2010.132

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2010.132

This article is cited by

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing