At first, it only looks like a bug bite, said Diane Sipkin, a physician at the Sacramento State Student Health Center. Then the infection, known as Methicillin- resistant Staphylococcus aureus or Super Bug for short, will gain redness, swelling and grow a puss-filled white head. Sometimes, Sipkin said, the boil can grow to be the size of a silver dollar.

MRSA is a contagious staph infection that creates boils of the skin and is spread through human contact, said Sipkin, who is head of infection control at the health center.

On Oct. 26, a strain of MRSA was discovered on a student at Natomas Middle School, approximately 12 miles from Sac State. The superintendent ordered the schools classrooms be disinfected during the following weekend. Sipkin said she believes MRSA is nothing for Sac State students to be paranoid about.

“(MRSA) has been out in the community for a long time and the community just hasn’t known about it,” Sipkin said.

Staphylococcus aureus is a normal bacterium that is present in 30 percent of all humans, said Professor Susanne Lindgren from the Sac State Department of Biological Sciences in an e-mail.

Lindgren said MRSA is an antibiotic resistant form of bacterium, which means MRSA is not as easily treated with common antibiotics like penicillin.

It is estimated that up to 75 percent of all people with Staphylococcus skin infections who come into the emergency room in Sacramento are caused by MRSA, she said.

Lindgren said students enrolled in the Sac State Pathogenic Bacteriology course are responsible for annual tests that investigate the student carriage rate of MRSA on campus and that none of the 52 undergraduates tested this year carried MRSA.

“If you are living right…and taking care of yourself, you have a dramatically reduced likelihood of getting ill from this bacterium,” Lindgren said.

Lindgren said students shouldn’t lose sleep over worrying about “dying from this one.”

According to health center records, 44 students were diagnosed with staph infections at the Student Health Center in 2006. Sixty seven percent of those infections were MRSA. Sipkin said all of the students were treated properly with a “lancing” technique that involves ridding the puss from the boil.

Sipkin said MRSA becomes fatal only if it is not treated for an extended period of time allowing the bacteria to work itself into a person’s blood stream. She said this is “very rare” unless the person infected is already seriously ill or wields a low immune system.

Sipkin said she believes the media is to blame for the increase in paranoia.

“The thing with MRSA is that it hits the news and people get scared about it,” she said. “It’s not a flesh eating virus…there’s a media frenzy.”

Despite what she’s read in the newspaper, senior history major Pamela Akhahon said she is not concerned about MRSA.

“There’s always something going around, whether it’s the flu or West Nile virus or meningitis,” she said.

Akhahon said she is not worried about getting infected because she showers and washes her hands regularly.

Sipkin said the infection can be easily spread by human to human contact.

“The people who really have to worry about it are athletes like wrestlers who are in constant contact with each other and those who share athletic equipment,” Sipkin said.

Undeclared freshman Duncan White, who plays for the Sac State football team, said, “At least 10 guys have acquired MRSA this year.”

White said his coaches have told players to examine themselves regularly.

“(We’re supposed) to take showers as often as possible,” he said. “And wear sandals in the shower…that’s an important one.”

Sipkin also recommends covering open wounds until they are fully healed and not sharing personal possessions like towels or razors.

She said hand washing is also “extremely important.”

“Prevention is really the key,” Sipkin said.

Andres Perez can be reached at [email protected].