Strep Throat 411: Vital parenting information from Eyewitness News

Strep throat has no real "season". Anyone can come down with it, anytime. It's an illness that has many different strains, and several symptoms.

When the sore throats start... parents go on alert. The notion of your child developing a case of strep throat is cause for concern. But diagnosing it takes time... symptoms can develop over the course of a couple of days. But there are classic symptoms to look for.

Dr. Joe Matusic, MD/Pediatrician
You'll have a sore throat, obviously, but you may have a headache, belly ache, fever of 101, 102, up to 104. You don't really have cold symptoms.

Using a flashlight will help you check for developing redness in the back of your son or daughters throat.

Dr. Joe Matusic, MD
Look for spots on the roof of the mouth. They sometimes have a white coating on the tongue and they'll have swollen lymph nodes, their glands will be swollen right here [shows throat].

So, if your child has a sore throat, that doesn't automatically mean they have strep. According to Dr. Matusic, 90% of cases that look like strep, are not. Most cases of strep go away on their own, treatment just makes it go away faster. But because some cases can take a turn for the worst, you need to get your child to the doctor for an exam if you suspect a sore throat is turning into something else.

Dr. Joe Matusic, MD
Some people, approximately one in 500, have a gene that makes them make antibodies to strep. That antibody mistakenly attacks their heart valves. And they get Rheumatic fever. And that can cause serious, lifelong heart problems and actually cause death.

If it turns out your child does have strep, a follow-up visit may not even be required, unless the symptoms do not go away.

There are rapid screens your doctor can perform in the office... but they are falsely negative 20% of the time. That means, if your initial screen at the doctor's office comes back positive you have strep. But if it's negative, your doctor will take a culture. It will be two days until you get results of that test. And you may get an antibiotic during that time, until your doctor reads the test results.

Additionally, there are somewhere between 70 and 90 strains of strep. And each time you get one, you're immune to that strain and maybe one strain close to it. So that's why adults seem to get less strep than kids. They've had so many strains they're immune to the majority of them. Also, Dr. Matusic says mononucleosis looks exactly like strep when it first shows up in patients. And two percent of sinus infections turn out to be caused by the same strain of bacteria as strep.