Case study - You are working in the emergency department of a regional hospital in rural Kentucky. A patient is brought in by emergency medical technicians (EMT). Their initial report is suspected meningitis because the patient has a headache and stiff neck. The EMTs add that the patient meningitis symptoms appear rather mild - he still has neck movement and the headaches are not severe. The patients overall condition is poor, however. He is very thin has dark spots on his face and upper body, and open-looking eruptions in his lips. His fever is 104 F, and his blood pressure is low. He also has severe diarrhea . One of the lab tests performed on the sample collected in the ER and delivered to the lab reveals the presence of a very large cells that appear to be eukaryotic, surrounded by a large capsule.
A) What specific lab test would this have been?
B) What organism could this be?
C) Name some other eukaryotic organism that can cause meningitis symptoms.