Family Epidemic of Tinea Capitis Due to Trichophyton Tonsurans (Variety Sulfureum)

Infection of the scalp with Trichophyton sulfureum is evidently uncommon in the United States. Of 2,857 cases of tinea capitis seen at the Skin and Cancer Unit of the New York Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital from 1940 to 1947, there were only four infections with T. sulfureum.1Another group in the same city observed five instances of this infection in 312 cases of tinea capitis.2Slaughter3reported a case of glabrous skin infection with T. sulfureum, and recently Moore and Wooldridge4cited an instance of kerion caused by this organism. Georg, at the Communicable Disease Center, U. S. Public Health Service, in Atlanta, Georgia, states that infections with this organism are on the increase.5 Tinea capitis in the United States is caused largely by species of the genus Microsporum. The characteristic fluorescence exhibited by Microsporum-infected hairs under the Wood light is practically diagnostic of