Detection of Pediatric Bacterial Meningitis Pathogens from Cerebrospinal Fluid by Next-Generation Sequencing Technology

Abstract Objectives Bacterial meningitis remains one of the major challenges in infectious diseases, leading to sequel in many cases. A prompt diagnosis of the causative microorganism is critical to significantly improve outcome of bacterial meningitis. Although various targeted tests for cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples are available, it is a big problem for the identification of etiology of bacterial meningitis. Methods Here we describe the use of unbiased sequence analyses by next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology for the identification of infectious microorganisms from CSF samples of pediatric bacterial meningitis patients in the Department of Infectious Diseases from Beijing Children's Hospital. Results In total, we had 99 bacterial meningitis patients in our study, 55 (55.6%) of these were etiologically confirmed by clinical microbiology methods. NGS showed higher sensitivity and increased the positive rate of pathogen detection by 13.1%, and the positive rate of pathogen detection increased from 55.6% to 68.7%. The main pathogens identified in this study were Streptococcus pneumoniae (n=29), group B streptococcus (n=15), Staphylococcus aureus (n=7) and Escherichia coli (n=7). Conclusions NGS could be a promising alternative diagnostic approach for critically ill patients suffering from bacterial meningitis in pediatric population.