Melioidosis in Southeast Asia

Melioidosis: an important cause of pneumonia in residents of and travellers returned from endemic regions

“…Thailand has reported the greatest numbers [16][17][18], with an estimated 2,000-3,000 cases of melioidosis each year [19]. Melioidosis is also common in Malaysia [20][21][22] and Singapore [23][24][25][26][27][28].…”

“…Other countries in the region where melioidosis is recognised in humans and animals include China (especially Hong Kong), Taiwan and Brunei [15,[29][30][31][32][33]. Melioidosis is also likely to occur in Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines [15,19,34]. Melioidosis has been increasingly recognised in India [29,35,36], although reports that some of the ''plague'' scares of 1994 may have been cases of melioidosis [37] have been disproved [38,39].…”

Neutralizing Chimeric Mouse-human Antibodies against Burkholderia pseudomallei Protease: Expression, Purification and Characterization

“…B. pseudomallei virulence factors have been investigated since 1950, but as yet have been poorly characterized. Although B. pseudomallei isolates are capable of expressing an impressive array of both secreted and cell-associated antigens, the role(s) of these products in the pathogenesis of melioidosis are relatively ill defined (Leelarasamee, 2000). These products include exotoxin (Ismail et al, 1987), protease (Sexton et al, 1994), haemolysin, acid phosphatase (Heckley, 1964) and cytotoxic exolipid (Haussler et al, 1998), and have been reported to have cytotoxic and proteolytic properties (Heckley, 1964;Tumwarsorn et al, 1994), although the roles played by these various secreted exoproducts upon the virulence of B. pseudomallei are unclear.…”

“…Nevertheless, to date, there is no gold standard diagnostic strategy apart from bacterial culture, and treatment by combined antibiotic therapy is still practised in most endemic areas (Leelarasamee, 2000).…”

Economic Burden of Bacteremic Melioidosis in Eastern and Northeastern, Thailand

“…1 It has been estimated that around 2,000 to 3,000 cases of melioidosis occur each year in Thailand. 2 The annual incidence in northeastern provinces of the country has been estimated to be 12.6-14.9 cases per 100,000 persons. 3,4 The high melioidosis incidence in endemic countries likely carries a high economic burden.…”