[Epidemic outbreak of scabies related to a patient with human immunodeficiency virus infection and Norwegian scabies].

A patient with AIDS was admitted to our hospital because of pruritic and disabling erythroderma, it was treated with Lindane without improvement. Skin biopsy of a crusty lesion showed Sarcoptes scabiei hominis, and the diagnosis of Norwegian scabies was made. After a long and intensive treatment with several drugs, cure was achieved. In the following three months we detected 42 people with scabies, all in some relation with the index case. This feature of high contagiousness of Norwegian scabies in a constant, through the scanty literature we have found; and it is due to its diagnostic and therapeutic problems.