Meningitis victim etched in memory
As her fellow students at Penn offered tributes to Anne Ryan, officials looked for clues to how she contracted it and from whom.
The concrete outside the Pine Street apartment of Penn student Anne Ryan had been freshly laid. Four friends paused there yesterday to memorialize her, drawing tiny hearts and initials with bare fingers.
Ryan, 19, a sophomore, died of meningococcal meningitis Sunday morning after being hospitalized Saturday at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
Penn health officials are investigating whom Ryan was in contact with over the last 10 days and how she contracted the illness, said Jeff Moran, a spokesman for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.
Officials with the state Health Department called officials in Ryan's hometown of Erie to report her death.
"We'll probably never be clear on how she got it," said Charlotte Berringer, the director of nursing at the Erie County Department of Health.
About a dozen Erie residents who had spent time with Ryan called Berringer to see if they required treatment, she said. None did.
Dozens of students attended a vigil outside her home Sunday night, according to a report by the Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper.
Students were told in a campus-wide e-mail issued Sunday that the infection is not easily spread. It requires close and prolonged contact.
"From what I have read, I have no reason to be concerned," said Adela Smith, a graduate student studying social work, referring to the e-mail.
A small portion of the population, about 10 percent, may carry the bacteria that causes the illness but they are not harmed by it, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Health officials do not know which of the five known types of meningococcal bacteria caused Ryan's infection, which results in an inflammation of the lining around the brain and spinal cord.
There are vaccines that can protect against four of the five types, but no vaccine protects against one strain that causes about 30 percent of all cases, said Paul A. Offit, an infectious-disease expert at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
If the disease is detected in time, it is fairly easy to treat.
Most who get it will notice flu-like symptoms that quickly turn into a severe headache, stiff neck, and sensitivity to bright light.
"It can be hard to distinguish meningococcal disease from a flu, which is why when people die, it's usually because it's not recognized soon enough," said Offit.
Penn requires all incoming undergraduate students living in campus housing to get a meningococcal vaccine, said spokeswoman Phyllis Holtzman. Last year, 99.6 percent of incoming freshmen were vaccinated.
Students may request an exemption for a medical condition or religious beliefs.
Meningococcal disease is relatively rare, striking about 1,400 to 2,800 people in the United States each year, said Tom Clark, an epidemiologist at the CDC in Atlanta. Of those cases, about 100 to 300 die.
Among the college-aged, the disease infects five of every 100,000. The rate is higher than among adolescents.
Moran, the city's health department spokesman, said that in 2006 the city recorded two cases of meningococcal meningitis, both nonfatal. The year before, eight people contracted it and two died.
Stefanie Fazzio, a sophomore management major, was friends with Ryan. Like other students at Penn, she said she would not seek antibiotic treatment, recommended for those who came into close contact with Ryan.
"I think most people are just shocked about what happened," said Fazzio. "She was a beautiful person."