The Bacteria That May Be Causing Your Nasty Cold

WTXF- PHILADLEPHIA - Have you ever had a cold or sinus or respiratory thing that just won't go away or as soon as you get over one ailment here comes something else? Well, you’re not alone.

"There's something called atypical bacterial infections,”  specialist George Martin - head of Lankenau Hospital's Department of Allergy and Asthma, told us.

“The most common one of them in Mycoplasma Pneumoniae Infection," Martin explained.

Attacking your tracheal/bronchial tree --  and commonly seen in spring and fall but thanks to our record-breaking warm fall into winter -- this has been that gift that keeps on giving.

"Many times you see it in army barracks, international schools, in the workplace where people work closely together they infect one another," Dr. Martin said.

Most likely he says by breathing in the spray of somebody's cough. A nasty and tricky kind of misery, according to Dr. Martin.

"A very fastidious organism, in other words, difficult to culture but what it is is a bacteria that acts more like a virus."

Takes a blood test or mucus test to find it.

"Are doctors maybe missing this? Not so much that they're missing it but may be not being treated as aggressively as one would like."

Why does it keep coming back in one form or another?

“Your central nervous system could be affected - headache, inability to concentrate gastrointestinal as well as respiratory symptoms, sinusitis for long periods of time," Dr. Martin told FOX 29.

Asthma, allergy and respiratory sufferers suffer more and it can remain in your body up to 9 months.

But there is some good news Dr. Martin says it is easy to treat especially if you attack it quickly with 3 basic antibiotics.