Wake-up call for obscure but deadly infection

It may kill almost as many people as measles—probably close to 90,000 in 2015—but few have heard of it, even among physicians in areas where the deaths occur. It can manifest decades after infection and in many different ways: as an abscess; as a fulminant blood infection with fever, headache, and pain; or as a pulmonary infection with cough and chest pain that’s easy to confuse with tuberculosis. The obscure disease is melioidosis and a research team today sounds the alarm about it in a paper that provides the first global estimates of its prevalence and the number of deaths it causes. “I’m very happy to see this paper published,” says Alfredo Torres, a microbiologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston who wasn’t involved in the work. “It makes very clear that this disease has been underreported and that we need to pay more attention to it.” Melioidosis is caused by the bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei, which typically lives in the soil. People and a range of animals can become infected through skin abrasions or when inhaling contaminated dust or drinking contaminated water. The microbe can lead to acute disease immediately or lie dormant before exploding into full-blown melioidosis decades later, a trait that once earned it the nickname “Vietnamese time bomb." Melioidosis is resistant to many antibiotics; even when treated, up to half of the patients may die. http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2016/01/wake-call-obscure-deadly-infection