Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare from a Vietnamese refugee

Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare grew from the sputum of a Vietnamese woman, a recent immigrant, seen at a tuberculosis clinic in Birmingham, Alabama. The possibility that she had acquired this Mycobacterium in her native Vietname was considered, since current literature, indicates these agents have no predictable geographic patterns of distribution. Data indicate that outside the United States group III mycobacterial isolates are most common in Japan, Western Australia, and parts of Canada. No data are available for Vietnam. US physicians should be alert for possible nontuberculous mycobacteria in the 115,768 Vietnamese immigrants known to have entered the United States in the mid-1970s.