No patients died. Because demographic, socioeconomic, or underlying illness data were similar for the two control groups, the control groups were combined for the analysis of the case-control study. However, these differences were not statistically significant. B. ranarum rarely causes human disease in the United States. Basidiobolomycosis is most common in the tropical regions of eastern and western Africa, but cases also have occurred in southeast Asia and South America.
Infection is secondary to traumatic inoculation.
A definitive diagnosis of basidiobolomycosis requires culture of B. ranarum from clinical or surgical specimens, but a probable diagnosis can be made based on histopathologic appearance. The patients described in this report had peripheral eosinophilia, but this laboratory finding has not been reported previously as a feature of basidiobolomycosis. In the six cases described in this report, the three case-patients in whom GIB was diagnosed before 1999 apparently have been cured following surgery and treatment with itraconazole. The other three patients remained clinically well while taking itraconazole postoperatively. Because all of the Arizona patients underwent surgical excision of the affected parts of their GI tracts, it is difficult to evaluate whether itraconazole therapy alone could have resulted in adequate clinical response.