Melioidosis in Northeastern State of Malaysia: Spatial Analysis of Cases and Sequence Types

Abstract

Melioidosis is caused by Burkholderia pseudomallei which can be found in water and soil, as well as in animals. This study was carried out to study the spatial distributions of the cases and their sequence types (ST) from the isolates. The cases were taken from the Hospital USM admission records from the years 2014 to 2019. There were 70 cases which from these cases 33 bacterial isolates were included in this study. Multi-locus Sequence Typing (MLST) was performed to the isolates.  As the results, six novel STs were discovered. The cases were found to be clustered and concentrated in the northern part of the state. This study had revealed 15 different STs however, the predominant variant, ST371 (n=6) were found to be distributed in a dispersed manner. Meanwhile, the novel STs were found distributed sporadically in few districts of the state.