By Drew Bonifant

It has saturated the news. It has sparked crises on school campuses across the country. It has even resulted in hospital trips and deaths. Yet it often begins as little more than a bump on an arm or a cut on a hand.

In the past two weeks, reports on staph infection, specifically methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) cases, have filled newspapers and television broadcasts with middle school and college aged students who have been treated for the illness.

Last Friday, two cases were reported at Colby-Sawyer College in New Hampshire and two cases were also reported at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. According to Newsday, a middle schooler in Brooklyn died from the infection Oct. 14, and a high school senior in Virginia died earlier in the month.

While staph bacteria often exists harmlessly in the human body, in places like the nose and mouth, infection can develop on the skin and become severe if it enters the bloodstream and spreads to other areas of the body. Skin contact between people can help the infection spread.

“When staph infections occur, the most common is a skin infection, which can look like spider bites, pimples or boils,” said Dr. Deborah Yokoe, assistant professor in medicine at Harvard Medical School and associate physician at Brigham And Women’s Hospital. “Most are pretty easily treated by draining it without antibiotics. A smaller portion can be very serious. They can cause blood infections, pneumonia and bone infections.”

Staph spreads through skin-to-skin contact, when someone with the bacteria has an open or draining wound and comes in contact with someone else, Yokoe said.

MRSA is bacteria that is resistant to treatment by antibiotics. An MRSA infection can be spread despite medical attention, a property that has earned it the nickname “Superbug.”

The dangerous nature of the infection has led to increased news coverage, which Dr. Gairy Hall, medical director at University Health and Counseling Services, said is positive.

“The fact that it’s been more widespread in the media has created a lot of confusion, but also awareness on the part of patients and students,” he said.

Hall also said that while there have been some cases at Northeastern, the amount of staph instances rises and falls every few years.

“Things go around in cycles,” he said. “In the media, this was big about two or three years ago with some of the professional football teams and athletes, and in the early ’90s or so.”

Jen Spinella, a junior nursing major who worked at Massachusetts General Hospital, said the infection often flares up in hospitals.

“It’s a big killer in hospitals, because the patients are already ill with something,” she said. “They get the staph infection, and it just increases the morbidity. It’s very common. You can pick it up and, being a nurse, you can pass it on. It’s becoming a big epidemic in the hospitals.”

Misuse of antibiotics can lead to resistant staph bacteria which mutate into the form that can spread and develop serious infections, said Casey Thompson, a sophomore nursing major.

“If you take an antibiotic that’s not for [a specific condition], you might not have an infection. You just might not be feeling that great that day,” she said. “So you take an antibiotic, it kills all your normal bacteria that’s in your body, and then the bacteria that does survive adapts and mutates to the environment. They multiply and multiply, and then when there actually is a problem and you try to kill the bacteria, it won’t die.”

The infection is resistant to medicines, and doctors have yet to find a way to kill it, Spinella said.

Despite the severity the infection can attain, Thompson said there are many ways to protect against it, and it remains a fairly simple condition to avoid.

“The easy way to prevent it is just to wash your hands before you touch anything,” she said. “If you have a sore that’s open, don’t share your towels, or your sheets with anyone. All in all, hygiene is really important. Also, if you have a boil on your skin and you start to feel sick, and you get a fever that doesn’t go away, you’ve got to go to the doctor.”