Strep Throat and aHUS?

[Kortnee Fornetti]

Hello! My son, Kaleb, was just diagnosed with strep throat today and just to be safe, based on our past experience with aHUS, our pediatrician ran a urinalysis. It tested positive for some small amounts protein and blood. I read a little bit about the affects of strep throat on the kidneys and apparently this can be common and usually resolves itself. Could this affect a child with aHUS differently? I was just wondering if anyone else has had an experience with their child who has had aHUS and then contracted strep throat and how it affected them. I think we will have a CBC done tomorrow and keep checking his urine but I'm starting to get worried. It's been almost 11 months since the first aHUS episode and thankfully, no relapses. Thank you! Any responses are appreciated!

[Joy Lewis O'Brien]

For any person, regardless of whether they have aHUS or not, the kidneys tend to spill a little protein when the body is fighting an infection. There are also increased levels of protein in the urine after hard physical activity or with stress. Blood in the urine isn't something that just happens like that, though, so it's a much stronger indication of damage to the kidneys than protein. Hope Kaleb and Skyler are both recovering! The best thing about strep is that with antibiotics the symptoms resolve so quickly instead of a lingering sore throat from a viral illness! I'm actually usually happy to tell people they have strep since I know they can feel better in about 24 hours.

[Kortnee Fornetti]

Thank you for all of your responses! It was very helpful to have your feedback. We did have labs run today and the CBC came back with good results and a second urinalysis looked better than yesterday! Whew! Thank you again and I will be praying that Skyler recovers quickly too! :) Thank you again! This community has always been informative and supportive! .

[Linda Burke]

Gee Kourtney....we went to our wonderful primary care physician late this afternoon and Skyler also was diagnosed with strep throat today! We've never had a case of strep throat for Skyler before, but normally I'd opt to run Skyler's labs a day or two after a fever or other signs of a cold. We JUST had Skyler's labs drawn yesterday (which continued to be excellent, praise be!) so it was rather odd to have a fever of 102 and a very sore throat less than 24 hours later.
Skyler took his 1st dose of antibiotics tonight, and we'll see if his demeanor/fever/energy levels are better tomorrow. If the SkyGuy continues to be droopy tomorrow, we might have labs redrawn sooner than normal. With our son Hunter it seemed as if stomach viruses triggered the aHUS activity, but upper respiratory illnesses did not provoke aHUS activity.
Wishing you the best...I'm going to console myself with chocolate and Swedish Fish! ;-D

[Jodi Kayler]

Hi Kortnee, It's good to be concerned. Any bug has the potential of triggering an immune system response that causes the HUS. The bad bugs like strep, pneumonia, rotovirus, etc. are especially prone to causing a relapse. We found that Coen would typically be OK during a minor cold virus, but anything more severe would cause problems. We always worked proactively to increase treatment at the first sign of a virus to try to minimize the severity of the relapse. Best wishes.

[Heather Still]

I agree with Cheryl. It really depends on the individual. Ryan has not had strep, but when the disease was more active his labs would get worse with a cold or virus and we would do a "precautionary" infusion. Just keep being proactive and watching labs. Good luck.

[Cheryl Biermann]

It really depends on the child, for our son Nathan, strep was baaaad news. It always led to a pretty severe relapse and resulted in a few weeks in the hospital, when he was five, they took his tonsils and andenoids out because he had had strep an average of once a month for 6 months.

I hope this is not the case for you, but you are doing the best thing and keeping on top of his labs, this will alert the doctors if treatment is needed. It got to be that if Nathan tested positive, they'd give him FFP right after he was admitted. You might want to ask about proactive treatment. Good luck.