By Merlyn Mathew
With the new semester half-completed, students and staff are already getting apprehensive about this year’s flu season. Swine flu has been capturing the headlines for quite some time, but in reality it is treated as just the common flu.
For college students, the four main illnesses that can plague a student during the semester are the common flu, common cold, strep throat, and mononucleosis. For this month’s column, I’d like to concentrate on strep throat.
Strep throat, commonly known as pharyngitis, is caused by a bacterium called streptococcus or a viral infection. The symptoms generally start with a sore throat and can include a fever and swollen neck glands. Strep is highly contagious, but unlike a cold can be knocked out by antibiotics such as penicillin or erythromycin. Sometimes you can have strep throat and never know it. Patients can also have difficulty in swallowing and have a fever above 101°F. Also there can be swollen tonsils and white or yellow spots on the back of a bright red throat. So if you are coughing, sneezing, or a runny or stuffy nose, you probably do not have strep throat but a common cold.
Usually a rapid strep test or a swab is plated onto a blood agar plate is performed at the doctor’s office. Strep throat will go away in three days to a full week with or without treatment. However, doctors will tend to treat strep throat with antibiotics even though the antibiotics may not make the patient become well faster. The benefit of antibiotics is that they can shorten the time the patient is contagious and able to spread the disease to others and lower the risk of spreading the infection to other parts of your body. Patients stop being contagious twenty fours after starting antibiotics.
Other treatments for strep throat include taking over-the-counter medication such as acetaminophen (ie. Tylenol) or ibuprofen (ie. Advil or Motrin) to help with pain and fever. Of course, drinking plenty of water – don’t forget to drink those eight cups- and adequate sleep. Additionally, antibiotics, throat lozenges, warm salt water gargles and humidity are also suggested forms of treatment for strep.
If strep throat is left untreated with antibiotics, it can lead to more serious illnesses, such as rheumatic fever, kidney disease, toxic shock, or tonsillitis. Sometimes the strep infection can spread to other body parts and cause different infections such as ear and sinus infections.
As much preventative methods we can implement, stre
p throat still runs rampant during the semester and starts with the seasons changing. There is still a chance that you can become sick with a common cold first and then get strep throat. Be careful this semester, especially because there are more people living on campus this year and to be mindful of others if you are sick.
Photo Courtesy: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/images/ency/fullsize/19694.jpg
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