A bacterium long treated as a tropical import has been found in soil and water along the U.S. Gulf Coast, and public health researchers now describe the disease it causes as endemic in part of the southern United States. The CDC states plainly that Burkholderia pseudomallei "has been found to occur naturally in the Gulf Coast region of the United States."
The practical consequence is diagnostic. For decades, American clinicians were taught to consider melioidosis only in patients with recent travel to Southeast Asia or northern Australia. That mental shortcut no longer holds for people living along the Gulf.
