cases . West Indies . A report of three Mycoses imported from the

Introduction The Caribbean and West Indies are surrounded on 3 sides by endemic zones for most of the major deep mycoses. To the north in the United States there are the southernmost limits of the endemic areas of histoplasmosis and blastomycosis with coccidioidomycosis further to the west in Texas. In Mexico significant numbers of cases of sporotrichosis and mycetoma (madura foot) are seen, while in Central and northern South America chromomycosis, Lobo's disease and paracoccidioidomycosis make their appearance. However little is known about fungal infections within the West Indian islands although there have been sporadic reports of such cases. These have included acute pulmonary histoplasmosis in Puerto Rico (de Jesus and Morales, 1968) and rhino-entomophthoromycosis from Grand Cayman island (Bras et al., 1965). Chromomycosis and mycetoma are known in Jamaica, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Trinidad. More recently, Lobo's disease has been found in dolphins taken from Caribbean waters. The organism Histoplasma capsulatum has been isolated from bat and oil bird caves in Trinidad (Ajello et al., 1962). In any consideration of imported mycoses the large population originating from the West Indies living in the United Kingdom is of great importance. Travel between both areas is also relatively frequent and it is likely that tropical fungal infections from the West Indies will be seen increasingly in the United Kingdom. Between July 1977 and August 1978, 14 cases of tropical mycoses, excluding dermatophyte or Hendersonula infections, have been recorded at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and of these, 6 have occurred in West Indians, namely mycetoma (3), histoplasmosis (2) and chromomycosis (1). This report concerns 3 of these patients.