Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- symptom or sign
- Subclass of
- pain
- Image
- US Navy 040113-N-4614W-005 Capt. Wan Mun Chin examines a patient suffering from a sore throat and high fever.jpg
Show 3 more facts
- on focus list of Wikimedia project
- WikiProject COVID-19
- ICD-9-CM
- 784.1
- exact match
- purl.obolibrary.org/obo/SYMP_0000505
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~6 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Sore throat, also known as throat pain, is pain or irritation of the throat. The majority of sore throats are caused by a virus, for which antibiotics are not helpful.
For sore throat caused by bacteria (GAS), treatment with antibiotics may help the person get better faster, reduce the risk that the bacterial infection spreads, prevent retropharyngeal abscesses and quinsy, and reduce the risk of other complications such as rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease. In most developed countries, post-streptococcal diseases have become far less common. For this reason, awareness and public health initiatives to promote minimizing the use of antibiotics for viral infections have become the focus.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “sore throat” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.