Mother-and-child cases of sporotrichosis infection.

We report the appearance of lymphocutaneous sporotrichosis on the left arm of a 28-year-old farmer's wife, followed two months later by the same type of lesion on the right upper eyelid of this patient's three-year-old child. According to the mother, the child was accustomed to sleeping with the right side of her face applied to the lesion on the mother's arm, and so it was presumed that the infection had been transmitted by direct contact from mother to child. Cases of person-to-person contagion of this disorder are thought to be extremely rare, but where there has been close contact on a daily basis, such contagion is likely to occur.