The infection - painful, swollen pimples, boils, and rashes - spreads by direct skin-to-skin contact, such as shaking hands or wrestling, or by contact with items touched by people with staph, including towels or shared athletic equipment.
On rare occasions, it enters the bloodstream and sparks a more serious illness.
Once found mostly in hospitals, MRSA has taken up residence in a growing number of communities.
“It is no longer exclusive to very debilitated patients who are chronically hospitalized,’’ said Dr. Elisa Choi, an infectious disease specialist at Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates.
Choi and other health care providers are increasingly finding the infection in young, otherwise healthy people living in the community.
At the same time, Choi said, the pipeline of new antibiotics that can thwart the infection has slowed considerably.
“With the increasing prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria, like MRSA, we are going to run out of tools to treat infections,’’ she said.
Doctors often face a dilemma with such infections, Choi said, because patients may not have a boil or other wound that can be tested for MRSA, forcing doctors to make their best guess and choose one of the few antibiotics that remain effective.
Overuse or misuse of antibiotics can exacerbate the problem, she said, causing more disease-resistant strains of bacteria.
Westford’s superintendent of schools, Everett V. Olsen Jr., said the district is taking the cluster of MRSA cases seriously and outlined to parents in the e-mail this week the actions taken to combat its spread.
The school “is continuing to disinfect locker rooms, gym mats, and equipment,’’ the e-mail stated.
“All coaches are reviewing, with their athletes, ways to recognize the signs and symptoms, as well as methods to prevent staph infections,’’ the letter said.
The letter included fact sheets about MRSA and information about how to treat and control further infections.
