LEWISTON — Lewiston High School has sent letters to students’ parents warning them that their children may have been exposed to tuberculosis in the classroom in the spring.

According to LHS Principal W. Gus LeBlanc, 87 students shared various classes with the infected teen and health officials have strongly recommended that all of these students be tested for infection.

Letters were also sent to nine faculty members who had the infected student in their classrooms, LeBlanc said, and who were considered to have been in close contact with the teen. Testing is also recommended for these staffers.

More general letters were sent to all LHS families, alerting them to the diagnosis and providing general information about TB and its treatment.

The letters were sent July 1. The infected teen has been out of school since May 27.

“The most important thing to understand is that it’s a curable disease,” said Dr. Sheila Pinette, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. “The spread is very rare through infectious people.”

TB is a respiratory infection spread by tiny droplets in the air from talking, sneezing, or coughing, according to the CDC, and can be fatal if left untreated. Maine had eight confirmed cases in 2010, nine in 2009.

Lewiston High School will host State Epidemiologist Stephen Sears on July 14 at 6 p.m. with a TB information session for parents and members of the community. Free testing, which the school district recommends even though the risk of infection is low, will also take place July 25 and Aug. 1 at LHS. Students will return two to three days later to receive results.

Nurses will look for a little raised area on the skin, Pinette said. “That will tell us whether or not you’ve been exposed to TB. Then, if you have, they would go on and do a chest x-ray to see if you have a pulmonary infection.”

In the meantime, she said parents can watch for signs and symptoms like chronic cough, low-grade fever and excessive fatigue. People can also be carriers and have no symptoms.

The state is not releasing the infected student’s name or grade. He’s wearing a mask outdoors and getting treatment, and his family is being tested now. “It is hard for us to know exactly where his contact was,” Pinette said.

Populations that are more at risk for the disease are health care workers, the elderly, homeless, foriegn travelers and some immigrants who’ve been in the states less than five years.

Parents with questions can also call the CDC’s TB Control Program at 1-800-821-5821, or LHS at 795-4195.

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