PEDIATRICS Vol. 106 No. 1 July 2000, pp. 162-162
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To the Editor.
Early diagnosis and specific treatment can prevent sequelae or fatal outcome in tuberculous meningitis (TBM).1 Extrapulmonary tuberculosis is frequently associated with infection with low numbers of bacilli, which prompted the adaptation of nucleic amplification assays to nonrespiratory specimens for early diagnosis.2 Several such amplification tests are available for the detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MT), but few data describe their use in the diagnosis of TBM.
We performed a prospective study to assess pretreatment and
posttreatment cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) specimens of 72 children with
highly probable TBM