Bacterial meningitis casts shadow over region

FORT COLLINS - The sky isn't falling, but Northern Colorado residents are living under a shadow of potentially deadly bacterial meningitis.

Two young, healthy Colorado State University students living in Fort Collins were admitted to Poudre Valley Hospital within hours of each other on the evening of Oct. 19, both exhibiting symptoms of meningitis. One, a 19-year-old man from Parker, was treated and released within a few days. The other, a 23-year-old woman from Evans, died three hours after her admission.

It now appears the 19-year-old student contracted viral meningitis - a much more common form - and his admission to the hospital on the same night as the woman who died was purely coincidental.

By the time this is published, more details may be known about the victim and whether there was any connection between her and three players on a Fort Collins Adult Hockey League team who died after apparently contracting bacterial meningitis during a hockey game in June.

Two of the three men, ages 28 and 29, died later that month. Another man, age 52, held out until Oct. 11. The first and only other fatality in Colorado from the bacterial infection this year occurred in April - a student at Metro State College in Denver.

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