Evaluation on a modified Ziehl-Neelsen stainin the diagnosis of tuberculous meningitis / 中国神经精神疾病杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective Toevaluatea modified Ziehl-Neelsen(Z-N) stain in the diagnosis of tuberculous meningitis. Methods Cerebrospinal fluid specimens from 35 patients were stained by using the modified Ziehl-Neelsen staining. Re-sults The positive rate was 94.29% in 35 patients with tuberculous meningitisand the intracellular acid-fast bacilli was detected in 53.40%of all specimens. One case was stained positive in 15 patients with non-tuberculous meningitis. Con-clusion The modified Ziehl-Neelsen stain not only significantly improves the detection rates of tuberculous meningitisbut alsois able to identify intracellular M.tuberculosisin cerebrospinal fluidspecimen.Thus, the modified Z-N stain can be a convenient tool for diagnosing tuberculous meningitis.