Ear infections

health, people and hearing concept - close up of young african american woman ear



The good news: You can’t catch an ear infection. The bad news: If a germ caused this painful malady instead of, say, water in your ears, you can catch that germ responsible—and the most common culprit is a cold virus. “Due to congestion caused by the cold, the inner ear fills up with fluid and can become secondarily infected by bacteria; these stay in the ear and are therefore not contagious,” explains Matthew Mintz, MD, Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine and an internal medicine and primary care doctor in Bethesda, MD. “However, since the ear infection started with a cold, if the patient still has cold symptoms, they can still be contagious.” While ear infections can affect individuals of all ages, they more commonly hit children—they account for around 30 million trips to the pediatrician each year in the United States.