[Toxic shock syndrome].

Two young female patients are presented who answered to the criteria for diagnosis of toxic shock syndrome, which was first described in 1978 and reached an epidemic peak in 1979 and 1980 in the USA. The disease almost exclusively affects women using tampons during menstruation and is characterized by fever, hypotony, multisystem involvement and exanthema following by skin desquamation. The disease is closely associated with the isolation of S. aureus in the vagina or elsewhere and is probably caused by a staphylococcal toxin.