Advances in understanding the pharmacology of agents used to treat bacterial meningitis.

Recently, substantial progress has been made in the therapy of bacterial meningitis related in part to better understanding of and predictions about the pharmacokinetics of antibiotics in the central nervous system. This review summarizes new data on pertinent anatomy and physiology of penicillin and cephalosporin transport in the central nervous system, focusing on the choroid plexus, which transports many antibiotics out of the central nervous system. These new pharmacological data provide the scientific basis for understanding recent advances in therapy of meningitis.