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Case Reports
. 2020 Apr;9(2):174-179.
doi: 10.21037/tp.2020.02.04.

Neonatal Ureaplasma parvum meningitis: a case report and literature review

Qiu Wang  1 , Kai Wang  1 , Yuanbo Zhang  1 , Chaosheng Lu  1 , Yana Yan  1 , Xiaoxia Huang  1 , Jing Zhou  2 , Lijiang Chen  3 , Dan Wang  1
Affiliations
Case Reports

Neonatal Ureaplasma parvum meningitis: a case report and literature review

Qiu Wang et al. Transl Pediatr. 2020 Apr.

Abstract

Ureaplasma parvum (U. parvum) is common commensal in the female genitourinary tract. Despite U. parvum has been associated with chorioamnionitis, abortion, prematurity and perinatal complications, the invasive central nervous system (CNS) infection is rare in neonates. Diagnosis of U. parvum meningitis can be difficult for the atypical presentations and sterile cultures by conventional methods. Metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) could identify a broad range of human pathogens in a target-independent manner. Here, we performed mNGS to search for the infectious etiology in a term infant presenting with fever and seizure. U. parvum genome was identified by mNGS and further confirmed by PCR in the same cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) sample. As the quick and timely diagnosis, the baby was successfully treated with erythromycin for 4 weeks without complication. The clinical follow-up has showed that the physical and mental development are normal. In conclusion, mNGS may a promising diagnostic technology for U. parvum meningitis. As mNGS is able to identify diverse microbes in a single run, it could be a useful strategy to detection the clinical causative pathogens with atypical features in neonates.

Keywords: Neonate; Ureaplasma parvum (U. parvum); case report; meningitis; metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS).

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at http://dx.doi.org/10.21037/tp.2020.02.04). KW serves as the unpaid section editor of Translational Pediatrics from Oct 2019 to Dec 2020. The other authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Sequence reads mapped to U. parvum by mNGS data. A total of 188 reads mapped to U. parvum in the reference database, corresponding to a total coverage of 1.24%.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The timeline of this case, including clinical presentations, tests and treatments.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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