Geographic Expansion of Baylisascaris procyonis Roundworms, Florida, USA

摘要

To the Editor: Baylisascaris procyonis roundworms are common parasites of raccoons (Procyon lotor) in several regions of North America, Europe, and Asia. These parasites are increasingly recognized as a cause of larva migrans in humans, an infection that often results in severe neurologic sequelae or death. In addition, larva migrans has been documented in ≈90 species of wild and domestic birds and mammals. In the United States, B. procyonis roundworms are most prev-alent in the midwestern, northeastern, and Pacifi c western states. Numer-ous surveillance studies have been conducted in the southeastern United States, and B. procyonis roundworms are most common in the mountain-ous regions of Virginia, Kentucky, and West Virginia (1–4). Geographic expansion of B. procyonis round-worms has been recently documented in Georgia. In 2002, 22% of raccoons sampled in DeKalb County, Georgia, a highly urbanized area near Atlanta, were positive for the parasite (5), and recently, 10% of raccoons sampled in Clarke County, Georgia, were positive (6). Whether this expansion is due to natural spread of the parasite among raccoons or to translocations of infect-ed raccoons into naive areas is unclear. We document expansion of B. procyo-nis roundworms into northwestern and southeastern Florida