Health Topics A-Z

What Are the Symptoms?

The illness begins with simple, flu-like symptoms — sore throat, runny nose, nasal congestion, fever, and sometimes muscle aches.

Very young children often react to the pain by arching their backs uncontrollably. Some forms of meningitis produce a dark red or purplish rash anywhere on the body. In babies, the swelling of the lining of the brain — the meninges — may also cause the soft spot on the top of the skull to bulge.

Specific symptoms include:

• Fever.
• Severe headache.
• Stiff neck, shoulders or back.
• Pain with eye movement.
• Severe shooting pain down the back of the neck and sometimes along the spine, when bending the neck forward.
• Inability to tolerate bright light.
• A bumpy and splotchy dark red or purplish rash anywhere on the body (in certain types of bacterial meningitis).
• Drowsiness and mental confusion.
• Vomiting.
• Seizures and coma.
• Paralysis on one side of the body in severe cases.
• In infants, a bulge of the soft spot on the skull.
• In infants, an eerie high-pitched cry.

Call Your Doctor If:

• You develop the symptoms listed above — particularly a combination of severe headache, stiff neck and painful aversion to light; seek emergency medical care immediately.
• Your child develops the symptoms listed above; seek emergency medical care immediately.