"Generally, melioidosis can be difficult to diagnose and tricky to treat, as it is naturally resistant to some antibiotics. It can infect people if they breathe it in or get it into open cuts. Sometimes the infection can stay localized, like a lung infection or a skin ulcer. But it can also get into the blood and become a systemic infection, spreading to various organs, including the brain."
"According to the CDC, about a dozen melioidosis cases are identified each year in the US on average, but most occur in people who have traveled to areas known to harbor the bacterium. Neither of the men infected last year had recently traveled to any such places. So the researchers turned to genetic sequencing, which revealed the link to two cases in the 1980s."
"In those cases, both men died from the infection. The man dubbed Patient 3 died in October of 1989. He was a veteran who fought in Vietnam-where the bacterium is endemic-two decades prior to his infection. The researchers note that such a long latency period for a B. pseudomallei infection is not entirely out of the question, but it would be rare to have such a large gap between an exposure and an infection."
Melioidosis is caused by B. pseudomallei, a rare soil bacterium that can infect through inhalation or entry via open cuts and range from localized lung or skin infections to systemic disease involving organs including the brain. The bacterium is naturally resistant to some antibiotics, complicating diagnosis and treatment; untreated infections can have fatality rates up to 90 percent while prompt, proper care lowers fatality to under 40 percent. Two men hospitalized with sepsis in 2024 recovered after heavy antibiotic regimens, and genetic sequencing linked their cases to two fatal 1980s infections, suggesting possible environmental exposure and rare long latency.
Read at Ars Technica
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