Australian doctors have diagnosed treatment-resistant tinea in refugees from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, raising concerns that cases are slipping under the radar.

One patient, aged 25, had arrived in Australia from Pakistan a year ago, the team wrote in The Medical Journal of Australia this month.

He had an itchy rash on his groin and thighs lasting 15 months, which had not improved with terbinafine cream, topical clotrimazole and betamethasone, and only partly improved with oral fluconazole.

Eventually, the Victorian and NSW team cultured a urease-negative trichophyton species from skin scrapings.