A Clinical, Epidemiologic and Laboratory Investigation of Aseptic Meningitis during the Four-Year Period, 1955–1958

ASEPTIC meningitis1 is a clinical syndrome encompassing a group of illnesses that includes and is clinically indistinguishable from nonparalytic poliomyelitis. The principal features are fever and signs of meningeal irritation, with cerebrospinal-fluid findings of pleocytosis, increased protein, normal sugar and absence of bacteria. Among infectious agents, viruses have been most frequently associated with this syndrome. In recent years the relation of some of the newly recognized members of the enterovirus group2 to the aseptic-meningitis syndrome has been established by isolation in tissue culture of viruses from patients with these illnesses. This group of viruses has epidemiologic and laboratory attributes closely . . .