Since inflammation is a major contributor to severity of pneumococcal meningitis, we assessed whether the inflammatory cytokine response of mouse brain glia cells differed in response to the three isolates.The mean concentration of IL-6 released by primary mouse glia cells was higher in response to lysate of the serotype 8 isolate than to either the serotype 15B isolate (not significant) or serotype 14 isolate (p<0.01). Here, IL6 is linked to pneumococcal meningitis.