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Abstract
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This report describes environmental testing on soil and a racoon carcass following a multistate outbreak of melioidosis linked to an aromatherapy room spray.
Burkholderia pseudomallei, the causative agent of melioidosis, is an environmental gram-negative bacterium endemic in tropical and subtropical regions worldwide. B. pseudomallei can infect humans and a wide range of animals through percutaneous inoculation, inhalation, or ingestion (1). Melioidosis symptoms are nonspecific and vary widely because B. pseudomallei can infect any organ of the body, including the brain. In October 2021, the source of a multistate outbreak of melioidosis that involved four human cases in Georgia, Kansas, Minnesota, and Texas was identified as an aromatherapy room spray imported from India* (2).
After the discovery of the aromatherapy spray as the outbreak source, the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) learned that a previously healthy pet raccoon, owned by the family of the Texas patient, had broken a bottle of the implicated aromatherapy spray and walked through the liquid. On April 3, 2021, approximately 2 weeks after this exposure, the raccoon displayed acute neurologic symptoms consistent with neurologic melioidosis†and died from an undetermined cause 3 days later. The carcass was wrapped in a cloth robe and buried on the family's property. The strain found in the aromatherapy bottle (ATS2021) and linked to the outbreak contained a genetic variant, the bimABm allele, which is a virulence factor associated with neurologic melioidosis (3).
Language: en |