What can you tell me about Strep Pneumo

[TonyaW]

My son is 5 years old and has never been vaccinated. A friend of mine has a 6 month old baby who has had constant ear infections in his short life and constant rounds of antibiotics - recently they found strep pneumo in his ears - the child was breastfed some of the time but also formula fed and on formula now with no breast, also from a family who eats an absolutely horrible diet! Prior, he had received 2 of 3 of the vaccines according to his mom for strep pneumo (which I guess is Prenvar?). My concern is about my son catching this. Baby is fine BTW, just using more antibiotics - well fine isn't how I would describe it but he isn't in the hospital. My SIL wants to visit us this weekend and she has close, daily contact with this family. I really do not know much about this illness as I cannot find anything about it in any of my vaccine books. However, I read and awful and disturbing post about strep pneumo here on the vaccine Mothering board a while back about a boy hospitalized with it and was extremely ill. His mom never posted to say what happened, which lead me to believe that it was very possible the boy died. So I have been somewhat fearful of this illness, but I am not really knowledgeable about it. I don't know if I should tell my SIL not to come visit this weekend, because she has close contact with the family and could be carrying the disease. My son his fairly healthy, but I think he may be a bit more susceptible to illness especially respiratory illnesses because he has Celiac and Leaky Gut as a result. I personally seem to be very susceptible to respiratory illness unfortunately! I have gotten a bad case of bronchitis the last 2 years in a row and frankly surprised I did not get pneumonia - I am under considerable stress all the time right now!

What are your thoughts and can you tell me more about this disease?

[emmy526]

From what i understand, strep bacteria are everywhere, like MRSA, and staph are too.  and the Prevnar vax is no guarantee against not coming down with invasive strep infection, and studies indicate the vax may be responsible for mutation of the bacteria.  Does your son go to school, play at playgrounds and go out in the general public without complications? If so, then you should be okay, esp if your son goes to daycare or school--kids get vaxed for that all the time and harbor those bacteria with no outward infection at all......how did they know if was strep pneumo in his ears? did they do a culture?  

has your child had a problem with strep throat in his 5yrs?

[TonyaW]

Thanks for the info.

The baby had some sort of testing done and then they tested to find out which antibiotics would work against the strep pneumo.

My son has never had strep at all.

[fussamama]

Hi Tonya,

I cannot tell you more about the illness itself - I know that there are other moms on this board who are way more knowledgeable about this than I.  However, what I do want to do is to support you and tell you that you should go with your gut and tell this person not to visit.  At the end of the day, you and your child's health is the most important - not what others think of you.  Obviously, the thought of possibly contracting this is stressing you out - that in and of itself is your body's way of telling you NO.  These folks are moms too and they should understand that you are making the best choice that you can for your family.

Best of luck to you.  Hope you all are well.