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Pneumococcal meningitis is the most common and severe form of bacterial meningitis. Fatality rates are substantial, and long-term sequelae develop in about half of survivors. Here, we have performed a prospective nationwide genetic association study using the Human Exome BeadChip and identified gene variants in encoding dynactin 4 ( DCTN4 ), retinoic acid early transcript 1E ( RAET1E ), and V-akt murine thymoma viral oncogene homolog 3 ( AKT3 ) to be associated with unfavourable outcome in patients with pneumococcal meningitis. No clinical replication cohort is available, so we validated the role of one of these targets,  AKT3 , in a pneumococcal meningitis mouse model.  Akt3  deficient mice had worse survival and increased histopathology scores for parenchymal damage (infiltration) and vascular infiltration (large meningeal artery inflammation) but similar bacterial loads, cytokine responses, compared to wild-type mice. We found no differences in cerebrospinal fluid cytokine levels between patients with risk or non-risk alleles. Patients with the risk genotype (rs10157763, AA) presented with low scores on the Glasgow Coma Scale and high rate of epileptic seizures .  Thus, our results show that AKT3 influences outcome of pneumococcal meningitis.   Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40478-016-0320-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

V-akt murine thymoma viral oncogene homolog 3 (AKT3) contributes to poor disease outcome in humans and mice with pneumococcal meningitis