The frequency with which melioidosis results from inhalation rather than percutaneous inoculation or ingestion is unknown. We recovered Burkholderia pseudomallei from air samples at the residence of a patient with presumptive inhalational melioidosis and used whole-genome sequencing to link the environmental bacteria to B. pseudomallei recovered from the patient.
Keywords: Australia; Burkholderia pseudomallei; bacteria; biothreat; genome; gram-negative bacterial infections; melioidosis; pathogen transmission; pneumonia; zoonoses.