What does the scarlet tongue look like in the early stages?

The typical scarlet tongue with its protruding taste buds and deep red color usually appears only after a few days. Before this time, the tongue is covered with a thick white coating. These spotty white coatings also appear in the throat and on the almonds.

Even before the tongue loses its coating and takes on the shiny red tone, the taste buds can swell, causing them to stand out slightly from the surface of the tongue. This makes the tongue look very rough, and the white coatings stick more to the uneven surface. An inflammatory reaction can also take place in the tongue itself due to the infection.

This leads to a swelling of the tongue. This can also cause severe pain. The red color of the tongue is also caused by this inflammatory reaction, but it is not yet visible in the early stages of the disease due to the coatings.

Associated symptoms

In the case of scarlet fever, other symptoms occur in addition to the typical raspberry tongue, especially in the throat and neck area. These include a strongly reddened and painful throat, the tonsils can swell. In addition, whitish coatings often develop, which not only affect the tongue but also the tonsils and throat.

Accompanying symptoms are strong fever up to chills, headaches and stomach aches can also occur. Due to the swelling of the tongue and the pain in the tongue, throat and throat, swallowing difficulties may occur. As a sign of a severe infection, the lymph nodes may also swell.

These form sentinels in the lymphatic system and are an important part of the body’s immune system. Especially the lymph nodes in the neck and under the chin swell strongly in scarlet fever. However, lymph node swelling can also occur in other places such as the armpit and under the collarbone.

After about four days, another characteristic symptom of scarlet fever appears: the rash, which is made up of many small red spots. These are usually slightly raised, so that they can also be felt on the skin as small bumps. Typically, the mouth is spared from this rash, this is also called “perioral pallor”, colloquially also milk beard.

After about two weeks, the skin begins to peel off on the fingers and toes. Sometimes the entire soles of the feet and palms of the hands are also affected.Due to the inflammation that scarlet fever also causes in the tongue, the tongue is particularly sensitive. Inflammatory reactions cause nerve endings that transmit information such as pain and burning to the brain to react more quickly to touch.

This is triggered by certain substances that are released by the body during inflammation. This is why the tongue is particularly sensitive in infections such as scarlet fever and reacts to touch and heat and cold with pain and burning sensations. The swelling of the tongue and the taste buds also causes the taste buds to protrude a little from the tongue.

This makes them even more receptive to touch and increases the burning sensation of the tongue. The pain associated with scarlet fever is due to the strong inflammatory reaction of the body. During the infection, the tongue, throat and neck are severely swollen and reddened.

This makes them particularly sensitive to touch and strong temperature changes such as heat and cold. Scarlet fever is often accompanied by pain in the joints (polyarthritis) or as muscle pain in the context of high fever. Headaches and abdominal pain can also accompany scarlet fever. They are usually also caused by the fever, often also by not drinking enough.