Take a chill pill.

In the vernacular of teenagers, that was Dr. Mark Dowell's message to parents who are worried about recent national news reports about the penicillin-resistant "Superbug" or MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus).

Dowell, an infectious disease specialist, spoke Thursday evening to a couple dozen health, education and youth recreation professionals at the Wyoming Medical Center.

He was plainly frustrated by the spate of national and international news coverage that has hyped the staph infection as a sudden, deadly medical problem. ABC, CBS, NPR and the BBC have carried stories in recent weeks, while national and local newspapers have had stories about students and athletes picking up the disease.

Dowell said MRSA cases are not unusual -- he sees one or two a week -- are treatable with antibiotics, rarely result in hospitalization, and even more rarely result in death.

"We have people die of pneumonia and influenza every year" at greater rates than deaths due to MRSA, he said.

Lessons

Staphylococcus aureus is commonly referred to as "staph" and is commonly carried on the skin or in the nose of healthy people, said Dowell. Approximately 25-30 percent of the population is colonized (meaning the bacteria is present, but not causing an infection) in the nose with staph bacteria. Common pimples and boils are caused by staph, he said, but staph can cause serious and sometimes deadly infections.

MRSA is a kind of staph, said Dowell, that has developed resistance to antibodies, either through overuse of antibiotics by people, or the pervasive use of antibiotics by livestock growers. Only one percent of the population is colonized with MRSA.

Community-acquired MRSA (CA-MRSA) shows up in schools, college dorms, jails, military barracks, hospitals and sporting events - anywhere lots of people come together.

Symptoms of a staph skin infection include:

Red bump that may be pus-filled (sometimes mistaken for a spider bite)

Warmth

· Pain

Swollen, red, tender skin lesions

Because CA-MRSA can be passed to others, it is important to keep any wounds covered, for caregivers to use gloves when providing wound care, and, as a general rule, always maintain good hand-washing habits.

State health officials are backing Dowell's "don't panic" message.

{M3"Historically, MRSA infections have been mostly found in persons with certain risk factors such as prior hospitalization, certain medical devices and long-term care facility residency," said Dr. Tracy Murphy, state epidemiologist with the Wyoming Department of Health.

Murphy said there have been a number of CA-MRSA cases in Wyoming so far in 2007 - 74 last year.

Local and state public health and school officials are aware of a current MRSA case involving an employee of a Fremont County school. "At this time, there is no reason to believe that students or other school employees are at any greater risk than anyone else in the local community due to this case," Murphy said.

Dowell reserved special scorn for the Pike County School District in eastern Kentucky, which closed all 23 of its schools for an expensive disinfection campaign, after one student was diagnosed with MRSA.

"This must have been a political decision, or the local health department had weak leadership," said Dowell. Closing down and disinfecting all those schools won't do any good at all, he said, because four percent of the student population of 10,300 students are naturally healthy, asymptomatic carriers of MRSA bacteria and will quickly spread the bacteria throughout the 23 schools, through normal behavior.

News reports indicate that {M3in addition to a 12-year-old boy from Canarsie, Kentucky, who died of his infection on October 14, a 17-year-old high school senior in Virginia died of MRSA last month.

The New York press has reported at least seven students from Long Island, and 10 members from a sports team at Iona College, in New Rochelle, N.Y., have also been diagnosed.

A Center for Disease Control report estimates that 90,000 Americans may contract MRSA infections each year.