The causative agent of the most dangerous disease can survive for decades even in distilled water and kill an infected person in a few days. Until now, the disease was considered exclusively tropical and was noted only in some regions of Southeast Asia and Australia, where about 90 thousand people died annually. However, recently it began to be recorded all over the world.
According to the spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO) Eric Bertherat (Eric Bertherat), the death rate from melioidosis can reach 70%, especially in the absence of proper treatment. And this happens quite often, because even experienced doctors rarely encounter this infection and are unlikely to be able to diagnose a strange disease in time. Reported by: naked-science.ru
It is caused by the soil bacteria Burkholderia pseudomallei, which can enter the human body through the respiratory tract, digestive tract or skin wounds. The patient develops sepsis - an "overly intense" inflammatory reaction that engulfs the entire body and leads to extremely serious consequences. It is especially dangerous that the bacterium is resistant to a whole range of standard antibiotics.
According to a recent study by Oxford microbiologists, melioidosis is no longer a "localized" disease. Confirmed cases of infection were noted in 45 tropical countries, and suspicions of its appearance - in 34 more.
The spread of the disease is facilitated by both intensive trade and the amazing resistance of the bacteria itself. It seems that we are entering a new world where global infectious threats are becoming a constant background in our lives. Having barely coped with Ebola, humanity is faced with the Zika virus, and melioidosis is already looming on the horizon.