Posted on 11/16/2004 2:17:42 PM PST by Willie Green
Everybody knows strep throat is as common as backpacks among school children, but one of the surprises in a new study of Pittsburgh students is that it isn't even more common.
Elementary students "are sitting in a sea of strep," said Dr. Judith Martin, an infectious disease specialist at Children's Hospital who led a four-year study of the prevalence of group A Streptococcus bacteria in a Pittsburgh private school.
The researchers report in this month's issue of the journal Pediatrics that six out of every 10 students tested positive for strep at least once during a school year.
But just because 60 percent tested positive to strep at one time or another doesn't mean that all of them got sick. In fact, a bit more than half of those who tested positive had no symptoms.
It is this latter finding, regarding a group of children called "carriers," that is the most interesting. A child who is a carrier might have the bacteria present for a few months or even a few years and, once a carrier, is likely to become a carrier again and again.
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
Kids = disease factories with feet
Question is, will I finish typing this reply and submit before the first homescooler chimes in?
P.S., I have nothing against homeschoolers, just curious...
Oops, homescooler = home schooler. They're gonna jump on that one...
germ bags
Hah!
Shorter variant:
Kids = walking petri dishes
I have an evil strep sister.
Everybody's got germs crawling all over them. Most healthy people don't get sick because their immune systems are intact. When people get all paranoid and use the antibacterial products, they just make it worse, because it creates a nasty little natural selection for tougher, meaner bacteria. The key is to keep one's immune system healthy enough to resist the germs that it *will* encounter.
I really think we need to address the prevalence of illnesses in the schools and take better preventive measures.
One of these days we are going to have a serious killer flu and it's going to spread through the schools. And ear infections in preschool kids are unreal.
I'm convinced most kids go to school sick, in no small part due to the awards for perfect attendance.
Classrooms are probably poorly ventilated and the kids are all close together which just invites spreading. I'm not sure what I would do about that other than install ultraviolet light sterilizers in the ventilation systems of all schools.
Has anyone looked into family pets as carriers also?
My family used to always get strep at least twice a year when kids, but after the pet dog (which had bad teeth and gums) died are rate of reinfection dropped. I started going 1-2 years without getting sick. Most of the time I was picking up an illness from someone else that coughed in my face or something.
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