Filariasis serosurvey,New Caledonia,South Pacific,2013

Background: lymphatic filariasis (lf) is a major public health problem in the pacific. as the global prevalence of infection was not known in new caledonia (nc),a serosurvey study was conducted by determining the prevalence of circulating filarial antigens,as recommended by the world health organization. findings: a cross sectional study on a 2 degree stratified sample was carried out from june to november 2013. inclusion criteria were: individuals aged 2 to 80 y/o,who had been hospitalized or sought medical care for a non-infectious cause and who had been living in nc for more than 6 months. lf antigenic detection was performed using the immunocromatographic binaxnow filariasis card test (ict). among the 1,035 individuals tested,7 were antigenic. the overall lf antigenic prevalence was 0.62% (ci 95% [0.60-0.63]). all patients were unrelated to each other; none of them presented clinical symptoms of lf. four of the 7 ict positive patients reported having travelled to lf endemic areas,2 patients had never traveled outside nc and the last one had only traveled in non-endemic areas. for the 7 ict positive patients,the research of microfilariae in blood smears and filarial dna by pcr was negative. conclusion: the prevalence of filarial antigenemia in nc is less than 1%,the threshold that defines the filarial endemic areas for who. nevertheless,as two patients who had never travelled outside nc and one who had only travelled to non-endemic areas were antigenic,we cannot conclude that nc is totally free of lf. © 2015 daures et al.; licensee biomed central.