Boston (eCanadaNow) - Health officials in Massachusetts are concerned after two students died after showing flu symptioms as well has having the difficult to treat Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
They're calling it "fluMRSA" and of the 74 children who died of flu across the US in 2006 and 2007, 22 of them also had staph infection and most of those were MRSA cases
The total number of child deaths associated with complications from the flu have increased over the past several years.
Massachusetts makes up only 2% of the country's population, yet it accounted for 5% of this season's child deaths associated with the flu.
"The association of influenza viral infection disrupting the mucosa to permit secondary bacterial infection is not new," says Dr. Jerome Klein, professor of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine. "This is what happened in the influenza pandemic in 1957, which was co-incident with a pandemic of multidrug resistant staphylococcal infections. Not only were the elderly and immunocompromised prone to the combination, but otherwise healthy individuals were felled with substantial morbidity and mortality."
Health officials say that if you prevent the flu, the risk of developing a staph infection is significantly reduced.
State health officials and researchers are working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to activate a monitoring network so they can track those with fluMRSA to detect any kind of trends.
