In some cases, doctors may use a molecular test to detect streptococcal bacteria. In this test, a doctor swipes a sterile swab over the back of the throat to get a sample of secretions. The sample is tested in a lab. Your or your child's doctor may have accurate results within a few minutes.
A sore throat caused by a viral infection usually lasts five to seven days and doesn't usually require medical treatment. Antibiotics don't help treat a viral infection. To ease pain and fever, many people turn to acetaminophen Tylenol, others or other mild pain relievers.
Consider giving your child over-the-counter pain medications designed for infants or children, such as acetaminophen Children's Tylenol, FeverAll, others or ibuprofen Children's Advil, Children's Motrin, others , to ease symptoms. Never give aspirin to children or teenagers because it has been linked to Reye's syndrome, a rare but potentially life-threatening condition that causes swelling in the liver and brain.
If your or your child's sore throat is caused by a bacterial infection, your doctor or pediatrician will prescribe antibiotics.
You or your child must take the full course of antibiotics as prescribed even if the symptoms are gone. Failure to take all of the medication as directed can result in the infection worsening or spreading to other parts of the body. Not completing the full course of antibiotics to treat strep throat can increase a child's risk of rheumatic fever or serious kidney inflammation.
If a sore throat is a symptom of a condition other than a viral or bacterial infection, other treatments will likely be considered depending on the diagnosis. Explore Mayo Clinic studies testing new treatments, interventions and tests as a means to prevent, detect, treat or manage this condition.
Regardless of the cause of your sore throat, these at-home care strategies can help you ease your or your child's symptoms:. Although several alternative treatments are commonly used to soothe a sore throat, evidence is limited about what works. If you or your child needs an antibiotic for a bacterial infection, don't rely on alternative treatments alone. Check with your doctor before using any herbal remedies, as they can interact with prescription medications and may not be safe for children, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and people with certain health conditions.
Herbal or alternative products for a sore throat are often packaged as teas, sprays or lozenges. Common alternative remedies include:. If you or your child has a sore throat, make an appointment with your family doctor or your child's pediatrician. In some cases, you may be referred to a specialist in ear, nose and throat ENT disorders or an allergy specialist allergist. As a coping strategy, I limited my time with people and information to help reduce this unpleasant mental tension.
Then I quickly became very apathetic. The apathy was towards all sorts of tasks and activities. I am normally a motivated, enthusiastic and highly organized person. However, as this infection and its psychological effects progressed, I began to lose interest in the usual pleasures of life a condition called anhedonia , including pleasure from sex, and also lost the desire for sex low libido.
My enthusiasm, drive and motivation just evaporated away. I also began to experience some short-term memory difficulties , and inability to concentrate which caused problems in my day-to-day activities. Thus I found myself becoming less articulate, often mispronouncing words, and forgetting names.
Additionally, my physical body movements started getting a little more clumsy; I seemed to become physically less coordinated. To sum up , psychologically, I became: anxious, depressed, avoiding social contact, unmotivated, emotionally frail, confused, forgetful, clumsy, uncoordinated, with a dulled intellect, decreased verbal intelligence, and an impaired memory. At this point I noticed that the virus was spreading to friends and family and then later to their friends and families , but quite slowly.
For example, I would infect someone new only every month or two just by normal household and social contact. For most people catching this virus, there seems to be a delay of a month or two before the first psychological and cognitive mental symptoms begin to manifest.
And when this virus hits a whole family, as a result of the mental changes it induces, family members can become a little more emotionally distant from each other, with family relations in general turning to a functional pragmatism. Some people who caught this virus started to avoid social contact a little, becoming less interested in others. I noticed within my own mind that I lost the pleasure that normally arises from seeing friends, and from making new friendships.
This loss of the ability to take pleasure in company may be one reason this virus makes socializing less appealing. And for those experiencing mental tension and stress as a result of the generalized anxiety disorder precipitated by the virus, a second reason may be that with this mental tension, you cannot relax in company. This is what I found. The next symptoms I experienced were more and more fatigue and sleepiness hypersomnia.
I seemed to fall asleep all the time, even when I was not that tired. Perhaps this virus affects an area of the brain that regulates sleep such as the hypothalamus.
As this sleepiness and fatigue progressed, wondered if this virus was beginning to precipitate chronic fatigue syndrome. A large loss of appetite appeared at this point also.
Four months after first catching this virus, a new symptom appeared: a pins and needles or skin crawling sensation, first in my legs, but soon spreading across my entire body. There were constant sharp prickling sensations everywhere, which felt like they were located just beneath my skin. The severity of this prickling sensation varied from one day to the next. These type of sensations are called paresthesias. Also at this stage, I noticed the onset of a very mild loss of sensation and tactile sensitivity in the skin throughout my body.
The next symptom to arise was a severe loss of smell a condition known as anosmia. During some weeks my sense of smell would return a bit, but then the next week it would more or less disappear again. It continued in these up-and-down cycles for two years or so. However, after several years, my olfactory capabilities slowly improved, but have still not returned to anywhere near their original form. My oral health was then affected: my gums , previously extremely healthy and pink, began receding quite noticeably.
Lots of brown plaque was suddenly deposited on my previously perfectly white teeth. No matter how much I brushed it away, the plaque still came back. Previous to this, my oral health was excellent. Therefore, it seems I developed periodontitis receding gums from this virus within a matter of months.
This gum disease might be a manifestation of the immune-weakening effect this virus seems to create in the body several people experienced local opportunistic bacterial infections requiring antibiotics to treat soon after catching this virus , allowing bacteria to thrive and colonize the oral region.
In addition, gum tissue can be directly attacked by connective tissue-dissolving enzymes created in viral infections enzymes such as MMP Next, I noticed my vision began to deteriorate. So I had my eyes tested; nothing appeared to be wrong with my eyes or my ophthalmic prescription.
This fine wrinkled skin tends to first appear on the tops of the hands see picture. The skin also shows a slight red, blotchy quality beneath its surface but this is barely noticeable. I am guessing that this wrinkling is the result of collagen or elastin loss or damage under the skin, caused by the viral infection again, probably due to connective tissue-dissolving enzymes such as MMP In those older than around 60, though, this virally-induced skin wrinkling manifests more significantly, and in addition, in the more elderly the skin also becomes loose and sagging.
More details of this skin wrinkling and skin sagging symptom are to be found on this page of this website. Another symptom that manifested at this 12 to 18 month stage was weak legs and a weak pelvic girdle. My pelvis-to-leg joints feel a little spongy and lacking in normal firmness. It is possible that the infection is damaging the connective tissue in the ligaments of my pelvis, thus weakening the ligaments, Or possibly this weak legs symptom may be a manifestation of some mild polymyositis.
The result is a slightly less than sure walking gait, and a bit of a shuffling gait. This leg weakness and pelvic laxity is constant: it does not vary hour to hour, nor day to day. There is no loss of strength or spasm in the muscles either except occasional cramps in my calf muscles. Differential diagnosis : in generalized anxiety disorder GAD , weak legs are a common symptom, but a variable one.
In GAD the legs are fine one minute, and the next they suddenly get weak and can almost give way, due to nervous system fluctuations. But my case is not like GAD: my leg weakness is constant, never varied. And not that weak. Beginning at the 18 month stage, weight gain appears in some people, mainly in the belly area. This abdominal fat can appear even in people who were previously athletically lean and muscular. After 2 or 3 years with this virus, further skin symptoms appear.
The color of this upper chest rash is that of a heliotrope rash. Such a V-shaped red rash on the chest can be a sign of dermatomyositis, which is related to polymyositis. In addition, seborrheic keratosis seborrheic warts may appear on the skin: these are benign brown spots looking similar to moles.
See this picture I took of one the seborrheic keratosis spots that appeared on my skin. My seborrheic keratosis was diagnosed by a dermatologist. This virus generally appears to cause very slight immune system weakening , and this can result in opportunistic infections arising, for example: fungal skin infections, urinary tract infections, ear infections, tooth infections with toothache, etc all requiring antibiotics or antimicrobials to clear.
The highest immunosuppression seems to occur in the first few years of infection with this virus; but after that, these opportunistic infections abate. All of these heart attacks happened in people who were previously healthy, with no prior heart conditions.
One individual who caught this virus not only had a heart attack, but soon after also developed myocarditis inflammation of the heart muscle and pericarditis inflammation of the heart sac lasting for many months. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Drutz, JE. Sore throat in children and adolescents: Symptomatic treatment.
Stead W. Symptomatic treatment of acute pharyngitis in adults. Slippery Elm. Natural Medicines. Taking care of your voice. Chow AW, et al. Evaluation of acute pharyngitis in adults. Kellerman RD, et al. In: Conn's Current Therapy Philadelphia, Pa. Common colds: Protect yourself and others. Streptococcal pharyngitis. Rochester, Minn. Kahrilas, PJ. Clinical manifestations and diagnosis of gastroesophageal reflux in adults.
Gonzalez MD, et al. New developments in rapid diagnostic testing for children.
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