Locker Room
Just 10 years ago, chronically ill patients in hospital settings accounted for most MRSA infections. Kidney-dialysis patients, burn victims, and HIV-AIDS sufferers were among the high-risk groups, because their immune systems were weak and they took such heavy doses of strong antibiotics that their bodies became veritable petri dishes for the growth of superbugs. And even if they weren't growing their own germs, these patients often had bedsores that allowed bacteria to worm their way in.
But now, MRSA is turning up most among the people who'd least expect to get it: young, healthy men who are often in very good shape. Last year, several members of the Miami Dolphins, including star linebacker Junior Seau and kickoff-return ace Charlie Rogers, were infected with MRSA. Seau and Rogers had to be hospitalized, as did Tampa Bay Buccaneer Kenyatta Walker and the Cleveland Browns' Ben Taylor, who needed an emergency operation to beat the infection.
It's not just pro athletes who've been hit: Five members of a fencing team in Colorado were also stricken, as were two high-school wrestlers in Indiana, 10 college football players in Pennsylvania, and two more in California. Although no quantitative studies have broken down the MRSA outbreak by gender, the CDC has found that the majority of new infections are among young men who share some kind of skin-to-skin contact, such as through sports. Outbreaks have also been reported among military recruits (235 cases were diagnosed at one basic-training site in the South), gay men, police cadets, and prisoners. All those men recovered, but many needed hospitalization and heavy antibiotics.
"You don't even need direct contact to become infected," points out Barry Kreiswirth, Ph.D., the director of the Public Health Research Institute Tuberculosis Center. "Staph has been spread in locker rooms by towel snapping. If he's got turf burn on his leg and you've got the bacteria on the towel, he can become infected."
And the more MRSA spreads, the more aggressive it seems to become. Not long ago, a person infected with staph would show up in a doctor's office with nothing worse than an abscess.
But by 1999, MRSA had killed four otherwise healthy children in North Dakota and Minnesota. By December 2003, it was strong enough to kill Ricky Lannetti.
