CUSHING — Payne County Health Department officials are testing residents who may have come in contact with a high school student with tuberculosis.
About May 27, a Cushing High School student was diagnosed with the disease after showing such symptoms as a cough, fever and weight loss, said Dr. Phillip Lindsey, associate tuberculosis control officer with the state Health Department.
Since then, officials have asked about 125 people to have skin tests that check whether the body has had an immune response to TB bacteria. About half of the 125 have been tested so far. Of those, about 16 tested positive for the infection.
That prompted officials to send out more letters last week seeking tests for people, said Annette O’Connor of the Payne County Health Department. Though some people have tested positive for the infection, none have shown signs or symptoms of having the active form of tuberculosis, she said.
Lindsey said the state Health Department is still investigating contact cases in Cushing and sending letters to people who were in close proximity to the infected student.
Slow to spread Dr. Douglas A. Drevets, an infectious disease physician at OU Health Sciences Center, said if 100 people with normal immune systems were all infected today, 10 percent would likely develop the active disease. Half of that number would show symptoms within two years and the rest would show symptoms at some time in their lives.
People whose immune systems don’t work well, who have HIV/AIDS, who have had an organ transplant or who are on chemotherapy for certain cancers are more at risk of developing active tuberculosis if they are exposed, Drevets said.
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