Fusobacterium necrophorum
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| iFusobacterium necrophorum | ||||||||||
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| Fusobacterium necrophorum |
Fusobacterium necrophorum is the causative organism of Lemierre's disease and appears to cause approximately 10% of acute sort throats<ref name="ludlam2004">Aliyu SH, Marriott RK, Curran MD, et al. (2004). "Real-time PCR investigation into the importance of Fusobacterium necrophorum as a cause of acute pharyngitis in general practice". J Med Microbiol 53: 1029–35. DOI:10.1099/jmm.0.45648-0.</ref> and 21% of persistent or recurrent sore throats,<ref name="Batty2005">Batty A, Wren MW. (2005). "Prevalence of Fusobacterium necrophorum and other upper respiratory tract pathogens isolated from throat swabs". Br J Biomed Sci 62 (2): 66–70. PMID 15997879.</ref><ref>Batty A, Wren MW, Gal M. (2004). "Fusobacterium necrophorum as the cause of recurrent sore throat: comparison of isolates from persistent sore throat syndrome and Lemierre's disease". J Infect 51 (4): 299–306. DOI:10.1016/j.jinf.2004.09.013. PMID 16051369.</ref> (the remainder being Group A streptococci or viruses)
Older text books often state that F. necrophorum is a commensal of the human oropharynx, but this now appears to be untrue, and that when it is present, it is always a pathogen.<ref name="ludlam2004"/><ref name="Batty2005"/>
F. necrophorum infection usually responds to treatment with penicillin or metronidazole, but penicillin treatment for persistent pharyngitis appears anecdotally to have a higher relapse rate, although the reasons for that are unclear.
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