Hello! i completely agree with DKRESmith, do not get stuck on the tests any of them for strep or strep titers. My daughter woke up one morning at 7 years old and was a completely different child, she was repeating her self over and over and having horrible thoughts she could not get out of her head, she had OCD overnite! She had just had strep a couple weeks before! of course it took us a week of hospitals and doctors before they came up with the pandas diagnosis, and some doctors do not believe it exists but let me tell you it DOES!!
My daughter takes one 250 mg amoxicillin tablet once a day, for five years now! i will encourage her to always take it her entire life! My belief after the nightmare we went through with her and all the doctors , physcologists, physciatrists and all my research is that do not take strep throat lightly. Certain children have a genetic predisposition to rhuematic fever, this will create a PANDAS child! The strep antibodies in the childs body that are used to fight off strep bacteria become too numerous from constant exposure to strep in school and the antibodies turn around and attack the childrens body. They can attack the heart , the kidneys , and what we are seeing the basal ganglia area of the brain! This area when invaded , damaged or scarred , creates OCD. TICs , Anorexia , and so on? Now obviously there are other reasons that this area becomes damaged, it is not always strep.
My daughter was diagnosed at the cleveland clinic foundation, but after they diagnosed her they really had no treatment plan so with help from here and there we came up with one. My pediatrician who is more a local doctor had a hard time grasping this whole idea, he had not seen this very often, he did tell me last week he had a mother call frantic, that her young son was threatening to kill her and he could not get the bad thoughts out of his head, my doctor thought back to my daughter and said by any chance does he have a sore throat?? she said well last week he did but its gone and what does that have to do with anything!! he had her son brought in and he was positive for strep.
The symtoms for OCD are endless, but basically some type of repetitive thoughts. The psychiatrist told me alot of the kids with OCD also have the tics. alot of the offs and ons of this strange behavior in children is due to exposure to strep or i should say overexposure! Your child started young but young children can get strep
throat. i now have to watch my 6 year old son for symptoms! i am not a doctor or in any type of medical field professionally but let me tell you i have been through the medical field as a mom. I firmly believe that strep throat is responsible for most cases in children of OCD, Tics or Tourettes, Anorexia, and anger problems in children ( as long as home life is stable). children with these symptoms occuring more than one episode need to be on antibiotics low dose oncle a day. My daughter symptoms took about 6-8 months to go away, she has never had strep since that time and never had another ocd attack. you can still see some mild after-effects from the whole thing, i am so scared to ever have her miss an dose of amoxicillin, they said that can leave just enough of a window for her to get it again.
One more note, when i was at the Cleveland Clinic emergency room with her, the intern told me they had recently had a young boy in who suddenly stopped talking (selective mutism) when checked he had strep, when treated he began to talk again!
Sorry for taking so much space, i am just so glad to have people to talk to who know what i am talking about!
