Background: Mycoplasma hominis (M. hominis), which causes central nervous system infections in adults, is very rare. It is also relatively difficult to culture mycoplasma and culturing requires special media, resulting in a high rate of clinical underdiagnosis. Therefore, clinicians often treat patients based on their own experience before obtaining pathogenic results and may ignore infections with atypical pathogens, thus delaying the diagnosis and treatment of patients and increasing the length of hospital stay and costs.
Case summary: A 44-year-old man presented to the hospital complaining of recurrent dizziness for 1 year, which had worsened in the last week. After admission, brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed a 7.0 cm × 6.0 cm × 6.1 cm lesion at the skull base, which was irregular in shape and had a midline shift to the left. Based on imaging findings, meningioma was our primary consideration. After lesion resection, the patient had persistent fever and a diagnosis of suppurative meningitis based on cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) examination. The patient was treated with the highest level of antibiotics (meropenem and linezolid), but the response was ineffective. Finally, M. hominis was detected by next-generation metagenomic sequencing (mNGS) in the CSF. Therefore, we changed the antibiotics to moxifloxacin 0.4 g daily combined with doxycycline 0.1 g twice a day for 2 wk, and the patient had a normal temperature the next day.
Conclusion: Mycoplasma meningitis after neurosurgery is rare. We can use mNGS to detect M. hominis in the CSF and then provide targeted treatment.
Keywords: Case report; Central nervous system infections; Meningitis; Mycoplasma hominis; Neurosurgery; Next-generation sequencing.
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