Neurocysticercosis in Australia: still free of autochthonous cases?

To the Editor: I have read two recent reports on neurocysticercosis in the Journal.1,2 After performing a literature search for Australian cases of neurocysticercosis (PubMed search, using the terms “cysticercosis”, “neurocysticercosis” and “Australia”), I found reports of 39 patients, and the reports of 33 of these patients were published in the past two decades. This suggests that the prevalence of neurocysticercosis in Australia is rising, or that it has been increasingly recognised and reported in recent years. As expected in a developed country, more than three-quarters of the patients were immigrants from neurocysticercosis endemic areas, and the remainder were Australian residents who had travelled to endemic regions. So, although it appears that Australia is free of locally acquired neurocysticercosis, it is possible that some immigrants who developed the disease while living in Australia were not infected overseas, because some of them developed the disease more than 10 years after they migrated from their home countries.