Last winter saw a "large spike" in very rare pediatric brain infections, CDC reports

Hospitals reported a "large spike" of children with brain infections this past winter to the highest levels seen in several years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday, but cases still remain rare overall. 

The new findings were published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, updating a previous analysis from the same database run by the Children's Hospital Association. 

The CDC first began probing a potential increase in "pediatric intracranial infections" earlier last year, after doctors reported an uptick of these very rare hospitalizations, with many children infected by the bacteria Streptococcus.