Toxic Shock Syndrome Toxin 1 (TSST1)

TSST-1, a prototype superantigen secreted by a Staphylococcus aureus bacterium strain in susceptible hosts, acts on the vascular system by causing inflammation, fever, and shock. This bacterium strain that produces the TSST-1's can be found in any area of the body, but live mostly in the vagina of infected women. TSST-1 is a bacterial exotoxin found in patients who have developed toxic shock syndrome (TSS), which can be found in menstruating women or any man or child for that matter. One-third of all TSS cases have been found in men. This statistic could possibly be due to surgical wounds or any skin wound. TSST-1 is the cause of 50% of non-menstrual and 100% of all menstrual TSS cases. In the nucleotide sequence of TSST-1, there is a 708 base-pair open-reading frame and a Shine-Delgarno sequence which is seven base pairs downstream from the start site.