Ecology of Burkholderia pseudomallei and the interactions between environmental Burkholderia spp. and human-animal hosts.

Early workers thought that melioidosis was a zoonosis with a reservoir in rodents, but we now know that Burkholderia pseudomallei is a widely distributed environmental saprophyte. In northeast Thailand, two thirds of paddy fields yield the organism, and 80% of children have antibodies by the time th...