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When children present with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) pleocytosis, having a few clinical or laboratory criteria that would identify those at very low risk for bacterial meningitis would be helpful. Researchers previously developed a bacterial meningitis score for this purpose. In the initial study, two thirds of the participants were the derivation set and a randomly selected one third were the validation set; none of those classified as having very low risk were diagnosed with bacterial meningitis. Very low risk was defined as lacking all of the following criteria: positive CSF Gram stain, CSF absolute neutrophil count (ANC) ≥1000 cells/µL, CSF protein ≥80 mg/dL, peripheral blood ANC ≥10,000 cells/µL, and a history of seizure before or at t…