An East Side high school has joined the growing list of schools across the country affected by the potentially deadly "superbug" known as MRSA, with one confirmed case and another suspected case in student athletes.
A Sahuaro High School football player has recovered after being treated for an infection of MRSA — a potent bacteria resistant to standard antibiotics — and has returned to school, school officials confirmed Thursday.
The second case — described as "probable MRSA" — involves a female athlete, whose diagnosis has not yet been verified by laboratory testing. She is being treated by a physician and is not currently attending school.
Worried Sahuaro parents have been calling the school, in the wake of alarming reports of MRSA outbreaks in schools throughout the country, including the death this week of a senior at a Virginia high school. That prompted the closure of all 22 schools in that Virginia county for intensive cleaning.
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A just-released government study of MRSA — methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus — estimates the bug may be killing more Americans than the AIDS virus, with nearly 19,000 MRSA deaths possibly occurring in 2005, the most recent year studied.
However, the rising public panic over this newest "superbug" is unjustified, Pima County health officials say.
"This is not the first time this has happened, not the first Tucson school affected by MRSA," said Dr. Michelle McDonald, the county's chief medical officer. "In the last three years, we've had reports of affected students from many of the Tucson schools. We hear about isolated cases on a regular basis.
"Yes, I am concerned that MRSA is becoming more common in the community, and it is more challenging to treat. But I think the level of fear out there now is disproportionate to the reality of the threat."
At this point, there are no plans to close Sahuaro High School, 545 N. Camino Seco, said Tucson Unified School District officials, who sent a letter to all parents on Thursday to explain the situation, quell rumors and detail safety measures being taken.
"This is not an outbreak. One confirmed case and one suspect case in a school the size of Sahuaro is not an outbreak," said Suzanne Boyd, TUSD resource nurse, noting the district is consulting with the County Health Department. There are about 2,000 students at Sahuaro.
"But we certainly understand why parents are concerned. It is not that MRSA is new, but it is getting a lot of press coverage lately. We welcome that, because people need to be aware of it and know how to prevent it."
Just how the two students became infected is unknown, Boyd said. Though both attend Sahuaro, they are on different teams and do not use the same locker rooms or athletic equipment — often suspect areas for bacterial contamination. MRSA is spread through skin-to-skin contact with an infected person.
"We just cannot confirm any common factor between them," she said.
Since the onset of the student infections in the past two weeks, all TUSD high school locker rooms have been cleaned and sanitized with products known to kill the MRSA bacteria, as have all weight rooms and wrestling rooms. All athletic teams are being instructed in personal hygiene practices and performing self-body checks, district officials said.
But some Sahuaro parents say that's not enough and are calling for the school to be closed long enough to sanitize all the buildings and related facilities, not just targeted areas.
"I have real concerns that they have not sanitized enough areas of the school. I think they need to take at least a day off and totally sanitize the place — the cafeteria, the desks, everywhere students go," said Diana Winans, whose son Zach is a Sahuaro junior. "I just think you can do no less for something as serious as this. No one knows where the students picked this up, what they touched, what they leaned against. I am concerned about Zach going there every day unless that is done."
Winans also questioned what appears to be a two-week delay in informing parents of the MRSA infections and how to protect their children.
"The first case happened two weeks ago, and now they tell us to talk to our kids about washing their hands? I wish they had let us know right away so we could start working on this. You think immediately about that case in Virginia. It's been pretty upsetting."
Blamed on decades of overusing antibiotics, the emergence of antibiotic-resistant germs — including MRSA — is not new. The MRSA bug has been a threat to hospitalized patients for decades.
What is alarming health officials now is clear evidence that it has jumped from the hospital setting and is spreading into communities, with steadily rising numbers of infections among people with no history of hospitalization.
In Tucson, that trend was first noticed two years ago, when the city's ERs reported a tripling of MRSA cases, with several ERS seeing as many as 500 infected patients that year.
Although fully a third of the U.S. population carries staph bacteria — including the MRSA form — on the skin or in the nose, most are never affected by it. But when MRSA enters the body through a break in the skin, and is not treated quickly with the very few drugs that can fight it, it can turn dangerous, and even deadly.
Infection starts on the skin, triggering inflammation, boils or nasty abscesses that can require weeks of treatment and lead to surgery and hospitalization. If it moves into the bloodstream — known as "invasive" MRSA — it can cause bone infection, lung-damaging pneumonia, organ damage, even fatal toxic shock syndrome.
The infected Sahuaro football player suffered only a skin infection, but no details were available on the nature of the female student's infection.
However, rumors that one of the students has been disfigured or had a leg amputated are untrue, school officials said in the letter to parents.
Most of the students infected at other schools around the country — in Connecticut, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, New York, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia — have been student athletes, according to reports.
Cases tend to cluster in crowded, unsanitary conditions — among athletic teams, in prisons, and of course, in hospitals.
The Sahuaro football player had suffered an injury that broke the skin around the time of infection, school health officials said.
"I think the school has taken all the appropriate steps so far," said Dominick San Angelo, who has two sons — Dominick, a senior, and Matthew, a sophomore — on Sahuaro's varsity football team.
His sons recently lugged home their uniforms and all their equipment to be washed and bleached, he said.
"I tell my children, I try to get them to wash their hands frequently, to use hand sanitizers whenever they can — we went over all that last night once again," he said. "I think they do understand the real need for that. Being on the football team, they share a lot of germs.
"But I understand why parents are worrying we are on the verge of an epidemic. You still are anxious as a parent. This is a very serious disease."
Downloads:
Read what was sent home with students regarding the MRSA outbreak at go.azstarnet.com/tusdnotice and go.azstarnet.com/spanishnotice
