A Review Article on the Effectiveness of Rifampin in the Treatment of Staphylococcal Meningitis

Introduction: Staphylococcus aureus is a gram positive bacteria which causes severe infections such as meningitis. Rifampin is widely used as an adjuvant therapy in the treatment of S. aureus infections. Thus, this systematic review is conducted to assess the effect of rifampin in meningitis treatment is similar studies. Materials and methods: Current study is a systematic review aimed to assess the effect of S. aureus meningitis. This study was performed by searching Science direct, Medline, Pubmed, Google scholar, SID, Springer, and Scopus databases using rifampin, meningitis, and S. aureus during 2000 to 2018. Results: Systematic review of several studies prove the effectiveness of rifampin in the treatment of staphylococcal meningitis. Of the 32 relevant studies, 10 studies which showed the highest effectiveness of rifampin in the treatment of staphylococcal infections were qualitatively analyzed among which 7 studies evaluated the effectiveness of rifampin in the treatment of staphylococcal meningitis and the rest 3 studies evaluated the effectiveness of rifampin and other antibiotics in the treatment of staphylococcal infections. Most studies insisted on the effectiveness of rifampin in the treatment of staphylococcal meningitis. Discussion: Results of this study suggested that rifampin reduces the staphylococcal meningitis episodes and to some extent its mortality. As a result, rifampin may be used as an adjutant therapy in staphylococcal meningitis.