BACKGROUND Melioidosis is an increasingly recognised cause of sepsis and death across South East Asia and Northern Australia, caused by the bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei. Risk factors include diabetes, alcoholism and renal disease, and a vaccine targeting at-risk populations is urgently required. A better understanding of the protective immune response in naturally infected patients is es...

BACKGROUND International melioidosis treatment guidelines recommend a minimum 10 to 14 days' intravenous antibiotic therapy (intensive phase), followed by 3 to 6 months' oral therapy (eradication phase). This approach is associated with rates of relapse, defined as recurrence following the eradication phase, that can exceed 5%. Rates of recrudescence, defined as recurrence during the eradicatio...

Burkholderia mallei and Burkholderia pseudomallei are the causative organisms of Glanders and Melioidosis, respectively. Although now rare in Western countries, both organisms have recently gained much interest because of their unique potential as bioterrorism agents. These organisms are less familiar to medical and laboratory personnel than other select bioterrorism bacterial agents and thus h...

Burkholderia pseudomallei, an environmental gram-negative bacillus, is the causative agent of melioidosis and a bio-threat agent. Reports of B. pseudomallei isolation from soil and animals in East and West Africa suggest that melioidosis might be more widely distributed than previously thought. Because it has been found in equatorial areas with tropical climates, we hypothesized that B. pseudom...

The Gram-negative bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei is the causative agent of melioidosis, a serious infectious disease of humans and animals. Once considered an esoteric tropical disease confined to Southeast Asia and northern Australia, research on B. pseudomallei has recently gained global prominence due to its classification as a potential bioterrorism agent by countries such as the Unite...

OBJECTIVE There are limited sources describing the global burden of emerging diseases. A review of human melioidosis reported by ProMED was performed and the reliability of the data retrieved assessed in comparison to published reports. The effectiveness of ProMED was evaluated as a source of epidemiological data by focusing on melioidosis. METHODS Using the keyword 'melioidosis' in the ProME...

BACKGROUND Melioidosis is an important public health problem causing community acquired sepsis in the northeastern part of Malaysia. METHODOLOGY From January 2001 to December 2005, we reviewed case reports of all bacteraemic melioidosis admitted to a tertiary teaching hospital, Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia. RESULTS Thirty-five patients had positive blood culture for meliodosis and 27 ...

BACKGROUND Previous studies on the Burkholderia pseudomallei genetic diversity among clinical isolates from melioidosis-endemic areas have identified genetic factors contributing to differential virulence. Although it has been ruled out in Australian and Thai B. pseudomallei populations, it remains unclear whether B. pseudomallei sequence types (STs) correlate with disease in Malaysian patients...

Melioidosis, caused by Burkholderia pseudomallei, is a potentially fatal disease, which requires an accurate and rapid diagnosis. This paper reports on the highly sensitive and specific detection of melioidosis antibodies by surface plasmon resonance immunosensor. The sensing surface was immobilized with B. pseudomallei BipD protein via a 11-mercaptoundecanoic acid self-assembled monolayer. Und...

We note with interest Rolim and colleagues’ cross-sectional serosurvey of residents of Tejuçuoca and Banabuiu in Ceará, Brazil to provide evidence of exposure to Burkholderia pseudomallei , the causative agent of melioidosis. 1 Although there is definitive evidence of culture-confirmed melioidosis in that region, 2 we caution against the use of an unvalidated enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (...