(September 15, 2007)--A skin disease usually only seen in South America, the Middle East and South Texas has popped up in North Texas in the last couple of years.

Dr. Kent Aftergut, a Dallas dermatologist, says that the infection caused by a parasite is rare in the United States for someone who is not a foreign traveler.

Soldiers in the Middle East have called it Baghdad Boil.

But a search by a team of doctors at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center found nine similar cases in North Texas in the last two years.

It's something that the Texas Department of State Health Services has noticed as well.

After hearing about a couple of leishmaniasis cases last year in northeast Texas and southeastern Oklahoma, the health department made the condition one of the diseases that doctors must report when diagnosed.

In North Texas, doctors say patients are likely becoming infected when a sand fly bites a burrowing wood rat, which carries the parasite, and then bites a human.

The disease can't be spread by human contact.

It’s not life threatening, but without treatment may take as long as a year to clear up.

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