Don’t Let The Flu Ruin Your Holiday

With H1N1 flu causing illness all across the country, the American Red Cross has some steps to take that will lessen the chances of getting sick over the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

“Thanksgiving is a time to enjoy being with family, not to be in bed with the flu,” said Sharon Stanley, chief nurse of the American Red Cross. “You can follow easy tips to try and avoid becoming ill over the upcoming holiday.”

Thanksgiving is one of the busiest travel periods in the United States. If traveling for the holiday or hosting a family celebration, washing one’s hands as often as possible is important to help ward off illness. The Red Cross offers the following ideas to help halt the spread of the flu virus during the Thanksgiving holiday:

Tips for Travelers

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Physician Urges Changes In Diagnosis For Sore Throat In Young Adults

New analysis from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) suggests that physicians need to re-think their diagnosis and treatment of sore throat, or pharyngitis, in adolescents and young adults to consider a more newly identified and potentially dangerous culprit as the source of that infection.

Currently, physicians are taught to suspect group A streptococcal bacteria as the primary cause of pharyngitis. But according to findings published Dec. 1 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, physicians also should look for the presence of bacteria called Fusobacterium necrophorum when treating sore throat in young adults and adolescents that worsens or is strep-negative.

“F. necrophorum, which only has been recognized as a potential cause of pharyngitis in adolescents and young adults in the past five years, may cause up to 10 percent of sore throat in those 15-24 years of age,” said Robert Centor, M.D., professor of internal medicine, associate dean of medicine at UAB and the paper’s lead author. “More important, F. necrophorum is associated with a rare but life-threatening complication called Lemierre syndrome.”

Lemierre syndrome mostly affects adolescents and young adults and rarely is seen in pre-adolescents. It begins with a sore throat, followed by an infected jugular vein after four to five days. Abscesses in other parts of the body may occur. Approximately 5 percent of people who get Lemierre syndrome die. Read more