Wrestling with the risk of MRSA

Link: Wrestling with the risk of MRSA.

One day after the ultimate contact sport opened its season, a county middle school teacher died from a drug-resistant staph infection, playing into the already heightened awareness of MRSA among the wrestling community. Because skin-to-skin contact is the nature of their sport, wrestlers are some of the most susceptible to infectious skin conditions, especially bacterial infections, according to health officials. Yet Montgomery County Supervisor of Athletics William Beattie has said that since the season began on Dec. 8, none of the county’s 800 to 850 public school wrestlers have contracted methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus — the same bacterial infection that took the life of Hoover Middle School teacher Merry King on Dec. 9.