Pathogenesis of percutaneous infection of goats with Burkholderia pseudomallei: clinical, pathologic, and immunological responses in chronic melioidosis

Melioidosis is a severe suppurative to granulomatous infection caused by Burkholderia pseudomallei. The disease is endemic to South-East Asia and Northern Australasia and is also of interest as a potential biological weapon. Natural infection can occur by percutaneous inoculation, inhalation or ingestion, but the relative importance of each route is unknown. Experimental infection models using mice have shown inhalation to be the most lethal route of exposure, but few studies have examined the pathogenesis of percutaneous infection despite its presumptive importance in natural disease. Caprine models are useful in the study of melioidosis because goats are susceptible to natural infection by B. pseudomallei, display similar epizootiology/epidemiology to that of humans within the endemic range and develop similar pathologic lesions. Percutaneous inoculation with 10(4) CFU of B. pseudomallei produced disease in all experimental animals with rapid dissemination to the lungs, spleen and kidneys. Initial fever was brief, but temperatures did not return to pre-infection levels until day 18, concurrent with a dramatic lymphocytosis and the transition to chronic disease. Distribution and appearance of gross pathologic and radiographic lesions in goats were similar to caprine aerosol infection and to reported human disease. The similarities seen despite different routes of infection suggest that host or bacterial factors may be more important than the route of infection in disease pathogenesis. The nature of melioidosis in goats makes it amenable for modelling additional risk factors to produce acute clinical disease, which is important to the study of human melioidosis.