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Left untreated, bacterial meningitis is usually fatal, but even if it is treated with antibiotics and the patient recovers, creationism's divine sadist who designed the bacteria, ensures one in three of them will be lefts with varying degrees of disability, including mental impairment, blindness, deafness or loss of motor control that will be with them for life.
This is the conclusion of a new study published two days ago in JAMA Network Open. It was conducted by a team under the leadership of Federico Iovino, associate professor in Medical Microbiology at the Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet.
The team compiled data on 3,500 people who contracted bacterial meningitis as children between 1987 and 2021 and compared them to just over 32,000 matched controls from the general population. The average follow-up time was 23 years.
As the news release from the Karolinska Institutet explains:
The results show that those diagnosed with bacterial meningitis consistently have a higher prevalence of neurological disabilities such as cognitive impairment, seizures, visual or hearing impairment, motor impairment, behavioral disorders, or structural damage to the head.In their open access paper, the authors say:
When children are affected, the whole family is affected. If a three-year-old child has impaired cognition, a motor disability, impaired or lost vision or hearing, it has a major impact. These are lifelong disabilities that become a major burden for both the individual and society, as those affected need health care support for the rest of their lives," says Federico Iovino, associate professor in Medical Microbiology at the Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, and one of the authors of the current study.
By analyzing data from the Swedish quality register on bacterial meningitis between 1987 and 2021, the researchers have been able to compare just over 3,500 people who contracted bacterial meningitis as children with just over 32,000 matched controls from the general population. The average follow-up time is over 23 years.
The results show that those diagnosed with bacterial meningitis consistently have a higher prevalence of neurological disabilities such as cognitive impairment, seizures, visual or hearing impairment, motor impairment, behavioral disorders, or structural damage to the head.
Highest risk for head injuries
The risk was highest for structural head injuries - 26 times the risk, hearing impairment - almost eight times the risk, and motor impairment - almost five times the risk.
About one in three people affected by bacterial meningitis had at least one neurological impairment compared to one in ten among controls.
“This shows that even if the bacterial infection is cured, many people suffer from neurological impairment afterwards,” says Federico Iovino.
Key Points
Question What is the long-term risk of disabilities among individuals diagnosed with bacterial meningitis in childhood?
Findings In a cohort study of 36 230 participants with up to 35 years of follow-up, those diagnosed with bacterial meningitis in childhood between 1987 and 2021 had a significantly higher risk of developing 7 neurological disabilities (cognitive disabilities, seizures, hearing loss, motor function disorders, visual disturbances, behavioral and emotional disorders, and intracranial structural injuries) relative to general population controls matched on age, sex, and place of residence.
Meaning These findings suggest that individuals in Sweden diagnosed with bacterial meningitis in childhood have an increased risk of long-term disabilities.
Abstract
Importance Few studies have examined the incidence of long-term disabilities due to bacterial meningitis in childhood with extended follow-up time and a nationwide cohort. Objective To describe the long-term risks of disabilities following a childhood diagnosis of bacterial meningitis in Sweden.
Design, Setting, and Participants This nationwide retrospective registry-based cohort study included individuals diagnosed with bacterial meningitis (younger than 18 years) and general population controls matched (1:9) by age, sex, and place of residence. Data were retrieved from the Swedish National Patient Register from January 1, 1987, to December 31, 2021. Data were analyzed from July 13, 2022, to November 30, 2023.
Exposure A diagnosis of bacterial meningitis in childhood recorded in the National Patient Register between 1987 and 2021.
Main Outcomes and Measures Cumulative incidence of 7 disabilities (cognitive disabilities, seizures, hearing loss, motor function disorders, visual disturbances, behavioral and emotional disorders, and intracranial structural injuries) after bacterial meningitis in childhood.
Results The cohort included 3623 individuals diagnosed with bacterial meningitis during childhood and 32 607 controls from the general population (median age at diagnosis, 1.5 [IQR, 0.4-6.2] years; 44.2% female and 55.8% male, median follow-up time, 23.7 [IQR, 12.2-30.4] years). Individuals diagnosed with bacterial meningitis had higher cumulative incidence of all 7 disabilities, and 1052 (29.0%) had at least 1 disability. The highest absolute risk of disabilities was found for behavioral and emotional disorders, hearing loss, and visual disturbances. The estimated adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) showed a significant increased relative risk for cases compared with controls for all 7 disabilities, with the largest adjusted HRs for intracranial structural injuries (26.04 [95% CI, 15.50-43.74]), hearing loss (7.90 [95% CI, 6.68-9.33]), and motor function disorders (4.65 [95% CI, 3.72-5.80]). The adjusted HRs for cognitive disabilities, seizures, hearing loss, and motor function disorders were significantly higher for Streptococcus pneumoniae infection (eg, 7.89 [95% CI, 5.18-12.02] for seizure) compared with Haemophilus influenzae infection (2.46 [95% CI, 1.63-3.70]) or Neisseria meningitidis infection (1.38 [95% CI, 0.65-2.93]). The adjusted HRs for cognitive disabilities, seizures, behavioral and emotional disorders, and intracranial structural injuries were significantly higher for children diagnosed with bacterial meningitis at an age below the median.
Conclusions and Relevance The findings of this cohort study of individuals diagnosed with bacterial meningitis during childhood suggest that exposed individuals may have had an increased risk for long-term disabilities (particularly when diagnosed with pneumococcal meningitis or when diagnosed at a young age), highlighting the need to detect disabilities among surviving children.
Introduction
Bacterial meningitis is an inflammation of the fluid and membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord due to a bacterial infection in the central nervous system. Despite the availability of antibiotic therapy, bacterial meningitis in children is associated with high mortality and a high risk of long-term disabilities such as seizure disorders, focal neurological deficits, hearing loss, and impaired cognitive functioning.1,2 The limited ability of antibiotics to cross the blood-brain barrier and the clinical problem of antibiotic resistance contribute to these risks.3 Among survivors, the occurrence of permanent disabilities has been reported to range from 20% to 50%.1,4-6
Studies investigating risks of long-term disabilities after childhood bacterial meningitis are limited.5,7-10 Existing studies tend to focus on well-known disabilities (hearing loss) and may therefore miss or underestimate risks of less visible disabilities such as behavioral disorders or psychiatric disease.2,5,11 In addition, most existing studies do not include a comparison group, making it difficult to determine the actual risk increase due to bacterial meningitis. The objective of this study was to estimate the risk of disabilities among individuals diagnosed with bacterial meningitis in childhood in Sweden compared with matched controls from the general population, by type of disability, by 3 major causes of bacterial meningitis (Streptococcus pneumoniae, Neisseria meningitidis, and Haemophilus influenzae), and by age at diagnosis, with up to 35 years of follow-up.
Figure. Cumulative Incidence of Disabilities by Type of Disability 
Shading represents 95% CIs.
Mohanty S, Johansson Kostenniemi U, Silfverdal SA, et al.
Increased Risk of Long-Term Disabilities Following Childhood Bacterial Meningitis in Sweden.
JAMA Netw Open. 2024;7(1):e2352402. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.52402
Copyright: © 2024 The authors.
Published by American Medical Association. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
Creationists who, while claiming 'Sin' also creates pathogens and other parasites, insist that any appearance of design in any organism, including bacteria, is evidence that their putative god designed it.
So, they are stuck with either making the blasphemous claim that something other than their god is good at creating living things and can make them so they are out of the reach of their 'omnibenevolent', 'omnipotent' god, who could neutralise or reverse their pathogenicity, or annihilate them altogether, if it had the necessary powers and ability. Or they have to accept that their god is a pestilential malevolence who designs these nasty little parasites to cause suffering, and even if medical science can save the life of its victims, it devises ways to ensure they continue to suffer.
That’s a problem for creationists, however. Meanwhile science will continue to devise ways to keep people healthy, based no doubt, on an understanding of how these pathogens evolved by a natural process in which gods, good, bad or indifferent played no part.
ID is not a problem for science; rather science is a problem for ID. This book shows why. It exposes the fallacy of Intelligent Design by showing that, when examined in detail, biological systems are anything but intelligently designed. They show no signs of a plan and are quite ludicrously complex for whatever can be described as a purpose. The Intelligent Design movement relies on almost total ignorance of biological science and seemingly limitless credulity in its target marks. Its only real appeal appears to be to those who find science too difficult or too much trouble to learn yet want their opinions to be regarded as at least as important as those of scientists and experts in their fields.
Available in Hardcover, Paperback or ebook for Kindle
This book presents the reader with multiple examples of why, even if we accept Creationism's putative intelligent designer, any such entity can only be regarded as malevolent, designing ever-more ingenious ways to make life difficult for living things, including humans, for no other reason than the sheer pleasure of doing so. This putative creator has also given other creatures much better things like immune systems, eyesight and ability to regenerate limbs that it could have given to all its creation, including humans, but chose not to. This book will leave creationists with the dilemma of explaining why evolution by natural selection is the only plausible explanation for so many nasty little parasites that doesn't leave their creator looking like an ingenious, sadistic, misanthropic, malevolence finding ever more ways to increase pain and suffering in the world, and not the omnibenevolent, maximally good god that Creationists of all Abrahamic religions believe created everything. As with a previous book by this author, "The Unintelligent Designer: Refuting the Intelligent Design Hoax", this book comprehensively refutes any notion of intelligent design by anything resembling a loving, intelligent and maximally good god. Such evil could not exist in a universe created by such a god. Evil exists, therefore a maximally good, all-knowing, all-loving god does not.
Illustrated by Catherine Webber-Hounslow.
Available in Hardcover, Paperback or ebook for Kindle
Illustrated by Catherine Webber-Hounslow.
The usual answer creationists and Fundamentalists give for why babies are afflicted with meningitis is because of Original Sin of Adam and Eve. That's a load of sung in my book. That's a stupid lame execuse to get the creator or God off the hook. It doesn't work. It's a failed execuse, its a failed explanation. The creator still comes across as an unfair, cruel, sadistic bastard. It's a reprehensible, disgusting being this Fundamentalist God, a being worse than Hitler.
ReplyDeleteReligious folks such as Ken Ham need to grow up and stop blaming every single tragedy and misfortune on Adam and Eve. Blaming everything on Adam and Eve is immature, misguided, unrealistic, and stupid. This unfair, unjust, unreasoning, unforgiving, cruel, heartless, pitiless, merciless God they worship also needs to grow up. It's a God who behaves in an ungodly, ungodlike manner. Being cruel and sadistic to your creation is not the behavior of a loving God. This monstrosity shouldn't even be called God. It's a being who has no heart and no conscience whatsoever for the suffering that goes on in the world. It's a reprehensible, disgusting being who is cruel like the Devil who is supposed to be His enemy. It's a God who has abdicated the world to the Devil. It's embarrassing.