Brief report
Melioidosis acquired by a traveler from Papua New Guinea

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Summary

Melioidosis is an infectious disease caused by Burkholderia pseudomallei. Melioidosis is of public health importance in endemic areas, particularly in tropical and sub-tropical areas. We describe a case of melioidosis contracted by a man with diabetes from Papua New Guinea that was evaluated using multi-locus sequence typing and whole genome sequencing.

Section snippets

The patient

A 54-year-old man with a swollen right elbow and severe pain of 3 days duration was admitted to the Affiliated People's Hospital of Jiangsu University in Zhenjiang city, Jiangsu province, China on 7 November 2014. The patient had poorly-controlled type 2 diabetes mellitus which required insulin. Recently, he left his residence in Papua New Guinea and traveled to Zhenjiang city, China on business. Before his trip, he noted right elbow joint swelling for 2 days. He had no history of travel beyond

Conclusions

This is the first report of a B. pseudomallei isolate in eastern China. The isolate was diverse at the genome-wide level with origination in Papua New Guinea. An increase in travelers moving to and from endemic regions may result in an increased frequency of imported melioidosis. Clinicians without exposure to patients with endemic melioidosis may miss the diagnosis and delay appropriate treatment. Therefore, awareness of B. pseudomallei as a possible pathogen is important for antibiotic

Funding

This work was supported National Nature Science Foundation of China (Grant 133 No. 81101227).

Ethical approval

Ethical approval for this study and agreement by the patient were obtained from the Affiliated People's Hospital of Jiangsu University, which abides by the Helsinki Declaration on ethical principles for medical research involving human subjects.

Conflict of interest

We declare that we have no other financial support or benefit conflicts except for what mentioned in funding and acknowledgments.

Acknowledgments

We thank the members of Shanghai Personalbio Biotechnology for their support in sequencing and bioinformatics analysis.

References (8)

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These authors contributed equally to the study.

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