Role of Cerebrospinal fluid Lactate Dehydrogenase in meningitis

Background: Meningitis still remains a condition of significant mortality and morbidity in pediatric practice. Tubercular and bacterial meningitis form an important group of neurological diseases associated with considerable mortality and morbidity in children.Material and Methods: The present study was carried out in the Department of Biochemistry at Government Medical College and Hospital, Aurangabad during the period June 1999 to June 2001 on 40 patients of meningitis and 20 controls from pediatric age group. CSF and blood samples from patients suffering from pyogenic meningitis (32) (Group II), tuberculous meningitis (Group III) (8) and control subjects (Group I) (20) were examined. Statistical analysis was done by One way ANOVA non-parametric test with tukey-test to compare all the group was used and calculated by SPSS 19 version of the software.Result: In our study we have seen that CSF sugar was Significantly lower in the Pyogenic Meningitis Group (II) as compared to Controls (I) and Tuberculous meningitis (III) group (p 0.05). CSF Proteins were significantly higher in Pyogenic (II) and Tuberculous Meningitis group (III) as compared to controls  (p 0.05). In present study: Mean CSF LDH value of meningitis (total) was significantly increased (P<0.05) as compared to controls. Mean CSF LDH value in meningitis (total) was 87.42±28 IU/L as compared to 26.85±10.79 IU/L in controls.Conclusion:  We have concluded that LDH help the clinician for diagnosing meningitis in addition to the routine investigations, further LDH may help in the differentiation between pyogenic and tuberculous meningitis.