Diagnostic Dilemma of <i>Aspergillus</i> Meningitis in Patients With Hepatitis C Virus Co-Infection: A Case Series
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Aspergillus meningitis can occur in immunocompromised and immunocompetent patients. The diagnostic yield is only 39% in immunocompromised patients and 69% in immunocompetent patients. Diagnosis can be challenging, as repeated cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) cultures can be negative. Even with multiple cultures, the diagnostic yield is meager, sometimes requiring a tissue diagnosis. However, prompt recognition and treatment initiation are crucial to minimize morbidity. We present two cases of patients with a history of intravenous drug use disorder (IVDU) co-infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV) and Aspergillus . Two young Caucasian patients with untreated HCV infection and a history of IVDU, presented with fevers and headaches. Their imaging and multiple CSF samples showing pleocytosis with negative fungal cultures led to a diagnostic dilemma. Due to progressive decline and to ascertain a definitive diagnosis, a brain biopsy resulted in a tissue diagnosis of fungal meningitis secondary to Aspergillus , with hyphae and granulomas, in both individuals. In the workup of chronic meningitis, Aspergillus infection should be strongly considered in patients with IVDU and HCV co-infection. In patients with chronic meningitis lacking definitive diagnosis from spinal fluid, tissue sampling should be pursued as soon as possible to ensure rapid treatment and prevent disability. HCV is associated with a reduction in cellular immunity; our two cases support that HCV and a history of IVDU carry risks of immunosuppression, warranting early and expedited workup for chronic fungal meningitis. J Neurol Res. 2022;12(1):25-29 doi: https://doi.org/10.14740/jnr706
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".