Two Patients with Tuberculous Meningitis

Abstract

According to the World Health Organization, one-third of the world population is latently infected with M. tuberculosis and 5%-10% of the infected individuals will develop active tuberculosis. It seems that, in the future, tuberculosis infection will be more important regarding the public health as the prevalence of the HIV infection and the multi-drug resistant M. tuberculosis increases. Approximately 1% of the patients with tuberculosis develops central nervous system tuberculosis. Although it’s rare, the mortality and the morbidity of the central nervous system tuberculosis are higher than the other forms of tuberculosis infection. In this paper, we aimed to draw attention to the importance of tuberculous meningitis in the differential diagnosis of the patients with headache or altered consciousness and its early treatment, in every day neurology practice by presenting two cases with tuberculous meningitis having interesting clinical features.