Motivated by applications to vortex rings, we study the Cauchy problem for the three-dimensional axisymmetric Navier-Stokes equations without swirl, using scale invariant function spaces. If the axisymmetric vorticity ω θ is integrable with respect to the two-dimensional measure dr dz, where (r, θ, z) denote the cylindrical coordinates in R 3 , we show the existence of a unique global solution, which converges to zero in L 1 norm as t → ∞. The proof of local well-posedness follows exactly the same lines as in the two-dimensional case, and our approach emphasizes the similarity between both situations. The solutions we construct have infinite energy in general, so that energy dissipation cannot be invoked to control the long-time behavior. We also treat the more general case where the initial vorticity is a finite measure whose atomic part is small enough compared to viscosity. Such data include point masses, which correspond to vortex filaments in the three-dimensional picture.