background: viruses are by far the most common cause of meningitis in children. objectives: the aim of this study is to describe the epidemiology of viral/aseptic meningitis (am) in children (2 months - 15 years) in shiraz. materials and methods: this is a cross-sectional prospective-descriptive study from may 2001 to may 2002 in nemazi and dastgheib hospitals, shiraz. ev meningitis was diagnos...

conclusions: even, very low amount of csf-igg with good specificity (90%); could differentiate cases and controls (p = 0.000). the csf-igg test (sensitivity 70%, npv 28.8%) was weak for ruling out the m. pneumonia in cases. positive pcr was rare (2%) in csf of cases and controls but is more reliable for diagnosing the recent m. pneumonia infection. we prefer to assay the csf for both serology a...