Author: Aimee Cunningham / Source: Science News
For kids, getting strep throat again and again is a pain.
It’s also a problem little understood by scientists. Now a study that analyzed kids’ tonsils hints at why such repeat infections may happen.Children with recurrent strep infections had smaller immune structures crucial to the development of antibodies in their tonsils than kids who hadn’t had repeated infections, researchers found. The frequently sore-of-throat were also more susceptible to a protein, deployed by the bacteria that cause the infection, that disrupts the body’s immune response, the team reports online February 6 in Science Translational Medicine.
Globally each year, there are an estimated 600 million cases of strep throat, which commonly produces a sore throat and fever. Doctors treat the illness with antibiotics, especially in children, who are at highest risk of developing rheumatic fever and heart problems from a strep infection. But some kids, even though they get treatment, repeatedly develop new cases of strep throat.
In the study, immunologist Shane Crotty of…
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