Abstract
Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) analysis is of utmost importance to establish an early diagnosis of central nervous system (CNS) infections and to start appropriate therapy. Besides the basic diagnostics containing CSF white cell count, lactate concentration and protein analysis, substantial efforts have to be made to identify and characterise the causing pathogen. Decisive methods are bacterial and fungal staining, microbiological culture methods, antigen and serologic testings including the determination of pathogen-specific intrathecal immunoglobulin synthesis and nucleic acid amplification methods. As preanalytic requirements and the choice of analytical methods depend on the suspicion of bacterial, fungal or viral CNS infections, a close communication between the laboratory and the clinician is important.
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Spreer, A. (2015). Detection of Infectious Agents. In: Deisenhammer, F., Sellebjerg, F., Teunissen, C., Tumani, H. (eds) Cerebrospinal Fluid in Clinical Neurology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01225-4_11
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