Chronic Prostatic Melioidosis Treated With Trimethoprim-Sulfamethoxazole

PSEUDOMONAS pseudomalleican cause disease in man varying from subclinical to chronic. Asymptomatic infection, detected by notable titers of specific antibodies, has been reported in as many as 20% of the healthy population in endemic areas. Acute illness is usually fulminant and begins either as a pneumonia or septicemia and may result in multiple metastatic abscesses in virtually any organ of the body. The chronic form of the disease usually involves the lungs, but it may also cause localized suppurative infection of bones, joints, liver, spleen, kidneys, and skin. Genital infection withP pseudomalleiis rare in man; however, epididymitis was a constant postmortem finding of melioidosis in military dogs in Vietnam. We report the case of a patient with chronic prostatic infection withP pseudomallei; over a six-year period, four culture-documented relapses and one serologically documented relapse occurred.

Report of a Case

In July 1970, one month after arriving