I found the NIMH factsheet on PANDAS very clear and comprehensive [1]. If this article is relevant to you, I suggest reading it too. Summary:
Children who have strep sometimes develop psychiatric symptoms as well. This is a condition called PANDAS[2]. The characteristics signs are tics, OCD-like symptoms, and anxiety, occurring in children roughly ages 3-12. The symptoms usually occur suddenly, "overnight".
So, the action is: If a child develops this sort of psychiatric illness, get them tested for strep, and possibly treat them for strep before the psychiatric condition. And awareness among doctors is low, so you might need to be the one to identify the condition and advocate for it to get treated.
The suspected mechanism is the immune system attacking human cells during an immune system response to stress. Some other commenters are discussing psychiatric responses to long COVID, schizophrenic-like symptoms, and effects of PANDAS on adults. There's also something called PANS for kids getting psychiatric conditions from infections that aren't STREP. This is very interesting to me too but the research still seems murky enough to not have an obvious course of action.
Children who have strep sometimes develop psychiatric symptoms as well. This is a condition called PANDAS[2]. The characteristics signs are tics, OCD-like symptoms, and anxiety, occurring in children roughly ages 3-12. The symptoms usually occur suddenly, "overnight".
So, the action is: If a child develops this sort of psychiatric illness, get them tested for strep, and possibly treat them for strep before the psychiatric condition. And awareness among doctors is low, so you might need to be the one to identify the condition and advocate for it to get treated.
The suspected mechanism is the immune system attacking human cells during an immune system response to stress. Some other commenters are discussing psychiatric responses to long COVID, schizophrenic-like symptoms, and effects of PANDAS on adults. There's also something called PANS for kids getting psychiatric conditions from infections that aren't STREP. This is very interesting to me too but the research still seems murky enough to not have an obvious course of action.
[1] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/pandas
[2] The expanded acronym is very long: Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated w/ Streptococcal Infections