Never really thought about strep much. As a kid I had strep throat. Normal kid-in-classroom type illness, right?
Before I gave birth, they tested for “strep” and I came back positive, so they gave me a special IV drip to help prevent it passing along to my baby during the birthing process. Hmm… okay? I had no idea strep behaved like that.
Now tonight, many years after the birth of my child, my mother explains to me that her mom (my grandmother) actually died slowly from complications of strep, causing my grandmother’s organs to gradually fail over time first in the hospital, then the ICU.
My grandma’s slow death is a core memory, but at the time my mother didn’t give much explanation for what was happening. She probably assumed I was too young. She wanted to protect me.
But now I’m concerned. How does strep migrate from some childhood disease of the throat to something passed along the vaginal canal to (in the case of my grandmother) heart and kidney failure, leading to death? Should I be concerned for my family’s health?
I thought it was just a sore throat. ELI5.
In: Biology
So when you say “Strep” you’re actually referring to different species of the bacteria called *Streptococcus.* There are a bunch of different species of *Strep* that cause different types of infections. So Group A Strep (or *Streptococcus pyogenes*) is the type of *Streptococcus* that causes your childhood strep throat type of illness. Group B Strep (*Streptococcus agalactiae*) can colonize the vagina and lead to infections in newborns that way. As another example there’s a species of strep called *Streptococcus pneumoniae* that can cause, you guessed it, pneumonia.
These infections are not related, but they’re being caused by different species of bacteria that are just very similar to each other in shape, the way they grow, etc. so they’re classified by a similar name.
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