Current status of Strongyloides infection in Okinawa, Japan.

Okinawa Prefectureis located in the southwestern part of Japan, belonging to the subtropical zone.It has been known as one of the areas with high prevalence of Strongyloides stercoralis infection (Asato et al., 1990; Sato, 1985) .Okinawa has also been recognized as an endemic area of Human T-cell Lymphotropic Virus 1 (HTLV-1) infection (Kohakura et al., 1986a, b) , and S. stercoralis has attracted attentions as an important opportunistic pathogen in adult T-cell leukemia patients (Nakada et al., 1984) .However, the incidence of fatal dissemination among Strongyloides carriers has not been yet known.