Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

jawshoeaw t1_ismjz4x wrote

I have seen strep throat turn into life threatening and even fatal necrotizing infections. However, most of the time you don’t have an active population of strep pyogenes bacteria in your mouth. Only 1-2% of people carry it in their mouths. Also the cuts and scrapes are usually very shallow and your mouth is lined with immune cells waiting to attack anything that might try to break through. As you might guess places like your mouth and your anus have a significant immune presence .

Necrotizing fasciitis is interestingly rare even with serious strep infections. It’s not as simple as strep or other bacteria causing an infection, other complex factors are at play. Most cases are in people with poor immune function, diabetes,’ drug use , malnutrition, or some combination of these. One theory is that the bacteria communicate with one another and send a signal saying basically to go full on attack mode.

Tl:dr strep a is rare to start with, and even if you get a strep infection, NF is still rare. A cut or scrape is usually shallow enough that bacteria can’t get very far and your immune system has a strong presence in the mouth

8