This 1 week old infant presented with erythema toxicum, which can sometimes be confused with “staphylococcal pustulosis”. Erythema toxicum is a benign rash common to newborns, which has an appearance that at times makes its diagnosis quite difficult, for it mimics the characteristic rash produced by a systemic staph infection, i.e. erythematous maculopapular eruptions.

Diagnosis, Integumentary System, Skin, Babies and Children

To do the search that retrieves these pictures, go to PHIL & search for: erythema toxicum. Most of the pictures from that search are included here; we have omitted a few on toxic shock syndrome.

The text information with each picture is the same as in CDC/PHIL; the CDC database also provides a link to a high-resolution publication-quality version for each picture (very large files).