The "New" Strep Throat

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just curious. Why do you call this "new"? Over the years, we've had several negative results in office but the cultures come back positive.

Not OP but I think the point is that there are a lot of cases of strep going around without the 'traditional' awful sore throat and fever.

Thank you. Having a kid with PANDAS (totally controllable by antibiotics, not chronic like some cases become) a post like this was VERY valuable to us previously. Child came down with overnight OCD but hadn't even complained of a sore throat at all. Strep test (culture and rapid) said negative. But blood draws told a different story - titers were elevated in a way that said a strep infection had been or currently was present.

Strep is no joke. For some people it can be very straightforward but in other instances, it can really lead to problems. PANDAS is similar to rheumatic heart fever (which is even more serious) in pathology. If your child is "off" and has a cold, chances are very good it's just a cold. But if behavioral issues or other things start to occur, don't rule out strep involvement, even if you've never really had a severe bad throat, fever, etc.

PS. Obviously sometimes strep can happen at the same time as a cold - so you would get the runny nose, cough, etc, in addition to the sore throat, so you'd think "oh, strep doesn't usually present with x, y, z" but then the strep can still be there.

Anyway, 'tis the season! We've avoided strep so far but I'm not sure our luck will hold out. It's a real pain for our family... And I'm just glad we know what to look for and how to treat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:not to be the dumbass but why does something so mild need treatment at all?

yes not all strep needs antibiotics!

Really? I've heard that for ear infections, but not for strep.

NP here. Like 10% of kids are permanently colonized by strep A (the kind that causes strep throat) asymptomatically. Others can usually clear it with their immune systems. But if untreated it can sometimes develop into more severe disease.

I'm more on the side of taking a "wait and see" approach than asking for a culture every time, though. My brother was a strep carrier and my siblings and I were on antibiotics about every month for years because the dr would do a culture for him if he has anything (a cold, flu, allergies, etc) and prescribe them to the siblings, too. Finally ended when he cultured my bro at a well visit on my mom's insistence and was like "I'll be damned." All my siblings have issues with antibiotics (allergies, etc) due to being on them too much as children. We also struggle with weight (a side effect of overuse of abx), so I don't want my kids to go through that. It's a tough call sometimes.

What? Weight gain and allergies are due to antibiotics? I understand they're being over prescribed, but let's not go too far.

You should go read about the gut biome and what doctors and researchers are discovering (I'm guessing that learning and understanding about this will severely limit the amount of fat shaming you feel entitled to do). And, yes: it might be linked to antibiotic use!

A PP here. I'm not a fat shamer. I'm the mom of a child with PANDAS. Our doctors (three separate ones, including one VERY holistic minded doctor) have said that we simply must do prophylactic antibiotics with my son. But I have read the same studies and this worries me. We have a very strong family history of auto-immune disorders. Everyone in my family has something from MS to crohns to celiac. I escaped relatively lightly with (so far and touch wood) only mild IBS that I can control with diet. Strep is serious, serious business for my kids, but at the same time, so are antibiotics. It's not good, on a micro level, to wipe out your gut flora constantly. In fact, we've had issues with candida and stomach upset due to the antibiotics. But, the weight thing seems very real (DS is a rail, but that doesn't mean he always will be). I think there are things that we do that are still very unknown. For example, antibiotics are what we know right now. We also know that right now some children have huge problems with the way they respond to strep. (It's not usually strep that is the issue, it's the way the body reacts to it - it's almost always an antibody thing that causes these complications, not the strep A itself).

Anyway, for right now, based on what we know and what we are still guessing, I'm going with treat it. If I had a child who could bounce back and defeat strep handily, that's great! I would probably take a wait and see approach. but I do not think that you can safely assume strep will just go away. If a kid has a sore throat and gets over it, great! But if your kid has a sore throat and starts having out of character OCD type tantrums, etc, take heed. And with PANDAS it's more obvious because there are behavioral issues that are very sudden and extremely noticeable. I don't know if the same is true for rheumatic heart fever, which we're fortunate not to be dealing with (again touch wood).

Incidentally, my kids never had antibiotics for anything until PANDAS hit. DS was four at the time. Some people think that these autoimmune things might be related to having had antibiotics at birth or in the early years (on their own or through mom) but that was not the case for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:not to be the dumbass but why does something so mild need treatment at all?

yes not all strep needs antibiotics!

Really? I've heard that for ear infections, but not for strep.

NP here. Like 10% of kids are permanently colonized by strep A (the kind that causes strep throat) asymptomatically. Others can usually clear it with their immune systems. But if untreated it can sometimes develop into more severe disease.

I'm more on the side of taking a "wait and see" approach than asking for a culture every time, though. My brother was a strep carrier and my siblings and I were on antibiotics about every month for years because the dr would do a culture for him if he has anything (a cold, flu, allergies, etc) and prescribe them to the siblings, too. Finally ended when he cultured my bro at a well visit on my mom's insistence and was like "I'll be damned." All my siblings have issues with antibiotics (allergies, etc) due to being on them too much as children. We also struggle with weight (a side effect of overuse of abx), so I don't want my kids to go through that. It's a tough call sometimes.

Interesting, PP! I hadn't realized.

[Anonymous]

I see this old thread was resurrected, but no one yet mentioned Jim Henson. Don't forget that he died from strep. Please don't mess around with strep. Get it tested and treat it seriously with antibiotics!

Dr. David Gelmont, who headed the intensive care team that treated Mr. Henson at New York Hospital, believes he died from toxic shock syndrome produced by the streptococcal bacteria. The condition is similar to the toxic shock epidemic from staphylococcal infections that struck women who used a certain kind of tampon in the early 1980's. Streptococci Group A, the type that killed Mr. Henson, also causes scarlet fever and rheumatic fever. Health officials suspect that Group A is becoming more powerful and is occurring more often.

Antibiotics might have saved Mr. Henson's life if he had come to the hospital a few hours earlier, Dr. Gelmont said, illustrating how speed can count in many types of infections.

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/29/science/the-doctor-s-world-henson-death-shows-danger-of-pneumonia.html