Mites itch campus
Brian Bourne
Issue date: 4/22/04 Section: News
The seven-year itch has returned, and it isn't a Marilyn Monroe movie remake.
A minor outbreak of scabies, sometimes known as the seven-year itch, has spread across campus. The nickname "seven-year itch" is derived from the characteristic seven-year outbreak cycle.
"We've been seeing an increase in the amount of scabies on campus," said Kelly Freeland, a family nurse practitioner at the Student Health Center. "Normally, I might see two a year. But probably within the last few months, I've seen about 15 students with it."
Symptoms of scabies include intense itching and a rash in certain areas of the body, including the wrist, the webbing of the fingers, the abdomen and genital area. Freeland said scabies also are found under tight clothing and warm, moist places.
"They're little mites, and they burrow underneath the skin, and first, they may cause a blister or a little bump," Freeland said. "And then usually, you can see them track in little lines up the skin, and then they multiply, and they can get under the skin, and then they move to warmer areas in your body."
Freeland said the waste products of the mites cause a histamine-like reaction, which causes itching.
Skin-to-skin contact spreads scabies. Sharing unwashed towels, clothes or bed linens also can spread the mites from person to person. Freeland said brief, casual contact cannot spread scabies.
"You have to have pretty close contact or contact with their clothes or bed linens or towels," Freeland said.
Claudine Frazier, director of the Adair County Public Health Department, said physicians generally report cases of scabies to the health department, but said that she has not seen many cases in Kirksville recently.
"It's always around," Frazier said. "We don't always see an outbreak of it."
Although scabies can be transmitted many ways, Frazier said sexual contact easily spreads it because of the amount of close physical contact.
Sara Schmitz, community educator from Tri-Rivers Planned Parenthood, also said scabies is highly contagious but preventable.
"[The precautions to prevent scabies] would be the same precautions you take to not get any other STD," Schmitz said.
She said scabies is common among children and nursing-home patients.
"The reason children get it is because they just run around and play, and any sort of skin-to-skin contact is how you can get it," Schmitz said.
Although scabies can be spread easily through sexual contact, Schmitz said scabies is not always considered a sexually transmitted infection. Scabies cases are not reported as STIs.
No matter how unpleasant, Scabies is treatable, Frazier said.
"It's not medically dangerous," Frazier said. "It's just irritating as heck to itch."
Frazier said the usual treatment is a prescription topical cream worn for 12 hours, usually overnight, and washed off in the morning. The cream must be applied to the entire body or the scabies will move to an untreated area.
"If not, sometimes you have to retreat once, but [there are] no real long-term problems after," Freeland said.
She said that although good hygiene is a good deterrent for scabies, cleanliness won't prevent scabies.
"Sometimes there might be some misinformation that only people that are really dirty get scabies, but that's not necessarily true," Freeland said. "I just don't want people to have that misinterpretation. People are just embarrassed about things like this."
Frazier also said proper hygiene is important and that people who have scabies should not be embarrassed.
"It's not a sin to have it, but it's a sin to keep it," Frazier said.