Global & Disaster Medicine

Melioidosis (Thailand to USA): Sore throat, fever, and bilateral thigh abscesses

MMWR

Mitchell PK, Campbell C, Montgomery MP, et al. Notes from the Field: Travel-Associated Melioidosis and Resulting Laboratory Exposures — United States, 2016. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2017;66:1001–1002. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6637a8.

“….In mid-July 2016, a Pennsylvania resident aged 15 years who had recently returned from Thailand was treated by a pediatrician for sore throat, fever, and bilateral thigh abscesses at the sites of mosquito bites (Figure). She had traveled to northeast Thailand with nine other teens as part of an 18-day service-oriented trip run by an Ohio-based youth tour company that arranges travel to Thailand for approximately 500 persons annually. This trip included construction and agricultural activities and recreational mud exposures. The patient subsequently developed right inguinal lymphadenopathy and worsening abscesses, which prompted specimen collection for culture on August 25. This specimen was sent to a commercial laboratory in New Jersey, which identified Burkholderia pseudomallei, the causative organism of melioidosis, on August 30. The patient did not experience pneumonia or bacteremia, and recovered fully after 2 weeks of intensive therapy with parenteral ceftazidime and a 6-month outpatient course of eradication therapy with doxycycline….”

The figure above is a photograph showing the colonial morphology displayed by Gram-negative Burkholderia pseudomallei bacteria.

Thigh abscesses at the sites of mosquito bites in a Pennsylvania resident aged 15 years who had recently returned from Thailand, July 2016

 


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