 | Blood Donation And Rheumatic Fever
  Colds and influenza, being mild viral infections of the respiratory tract, pose no serious threat to health. However blood donation and rheumatic fever do not mix. The fever can cause death and can be transmitted via the blood. Yet cold and flu victims are routinely warned to be alert for symptoms that exceed the usual ones. Though the original infection may not be dangerous, complications that can follow it may be deadly. The most alarming secondary infection is also caused by a virus, but some serious complications arise from bacteria, which are totally different from viruses.
Four types of bacteria cause the majority of cold and flu complications. One type, staphylococcus, can infect the lungs, to produce a particularly severe form of pneumonia, most often in infants and elderly people. Another type, called pneumococcus, causes a more common pneumonia that annually strikes 500,000 people and kills 25,000 in the United States alone. Pneumococcus can also produce middle-ear and sinus infections. A third type, Hemophilus influenzae, also attacks the middle ear and the sinuses, and the infection may recur again and again for months.
The fourth type of dangerous bacterial agent is Group A streptococcus. It, too, can cause pneumonia, although it rarely does so. It can also infect the tonsils or middle ear, but it is best known for the painful and potentially deadly strep throat, which often sweeps through crowded communities such as schools, camps and military training centers.
Children are particularly susceptible; according to one estimate, as many as 20 per cent of all school children suffer at least one bout of strep throat every year. Left untreated, this ailment can lead to kidney disease, rheumatic fever or other life-threatening illness. | Most Popular Common Cold And Flu ArticlesHow Does The Common Cold Affect Your Body Palpitations And Need To Cough Cough With Frothy White Sputum Types Of Rheumatic Heart Fever Pain Constant Low Grade Fever Nutritional Requirements Needed To Treat Fever Flu Symptoms With Neck And Back Pain And Muscle Aches Who Discovered Influenza Is Canada Ready For A Pandemic Influenza | |
| When these dangers arise, it is not simply because colds and flu make the body easier for bacteria to invade. An invasion may not be necessary often, the bacteria are already in the body, sharing living space with a vast variety of bacteria that are innocuous or even beneficial to human life. The potential destroyers generally do nothing to upset good health. But when a cold or flu wears down the body’s defenses, and congestion-blocked passageways collect pockets of mucus that serve as incubators, the harmful germs multiply and spread. They then generate a second, bacterial illness on top of the first, viral illness.
Fortunately, bacterial infections, unlike most viral diseases, are treatable. Bacteria are much larger than viruses—the streptococcus pictured is more than 30 times the size of the most common cold virus—and are complete living organisms rather than the simple packet of hereditary material forming a virus. Bacteria can be killed by antibiotics, if the drugs are administered in time— hence the need for alertness to unusual symptoms.
A string of Group A streptococcus bacteria, magnified 16,000 times by a scanning electron microscope, looks somewhat like a necklace of harmless pearls. In fact, these bacteriam are a serious source of secondary illness, including sore throat, tonsillitis, middle-ear infection and pneumonia. This is why you must be careful when making a blood donation and rheumatic fever is an ailment that you have. | Twitter About The Common Cold Cure  | | Common Cold Tip Of The Day Colds are rather difficult to catch by way of the mouth. University of Wisconsin researchers tested couples, asking that in each couple, the cold-stricken partner kiss the unaffiliated one for 90 seconds. Only one caught cold. |
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