Unusual staphylococcal toxic shock syndrome presenting as a scarlet-like fever

D O Andrey; T Ferry; N Siegenthaler; C Fletcher; A Calmy; G Lina; S Emonet

doi:10.1016/j.nmni.2015.08.002

Unusual staphylococcal toxic shock syndrome presenting as a scarlet-like fever

New Microbes New Infect. 2015 Aug 18:8:10-3. doi: 10.1016/j.nmni.2015.08.002. eCollection 2015 Nov.

Authors

D O Andrey¹, T Ferry², N Siegenthaler³, C Fletcher⁴, A Calmy¹, G Lina², S Emonet⁵

Affiliations

¹ Service of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medical Specialties, Switzerland.
² Hospices Civils de Lyon, CIRI, Université Lyon 1, Inserm U1111, CNRS UMR5308, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Centre National de Référence des Staphylocoques, Lyon, France.
³ Intensive Care Unit, Department of Anaesthesiology, Pharmacology and Intensive Care, Switzerland.
⁴ St Helens Clinical Commissioning Group, United Kingdom.
⁵ Service of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medical Specialties, Switzerland ; Bacteriology Laboratory, Department of Laboratories and Genetic Medicine, University Hospitals of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.

Abstract

Diagnosis of nonmenstrual staphylococcal toxic shock syndrome (TSS) is often challenging. A female medical colleague had a rare entity, a staphylococcal pharyngitis complicated by TSS. The diagnosis was confirmed by isolation of tst-positive Staphylococcus aureus in throat culture and by identification of a specific Vβ2 expansion pattern of her T lymphocytes. Recent improvements in microbiology can be of great help for the diagnosis of nonmenstrual TSS.

Keywords: Non menstrual TSS; Staphylococcus aureus; StrepA rapid antigenic test; Vbeta T lymphocytes expansion; scarlet fever.