Fatal Melioidosis in a Newborn from Hainan, China

Herein, we report a case of fatal melioidosis in a newborn. The newborn died of serious melioidosis with respiratory and multiorgan failure at 16 days of age despite extensive treatment with antibiotics and methylprednisolone. Burkholderia pseudomallei was isolated from the infant's blood and cerebrospinal fluid and identified as a novel sequence type (ST-1341). His father had cough and fever when the newborn was born, and a localized patchy infiltration on the right upper lung was seen in chest radiography, but B. pseudomallei was not isolated. Two years later, the father developed cough and fever again, and the same novel sequence type of B. pseudomallei was isolated from the blood of the father. It is postulated that transmission of B. pseudomallei from the father to the newborn might have occurred during close contact in the first couple of days after birth. Given the high mortality of neonatal melioidosis, particular attention must be paid when the caretakers of the newborn develop fever of unknown origin in a melioidosis-endemic region.