[5] In 1885, the German Botanist and Bacteriologist, Wilhelm Zopf (1846–1909) gave the pathogen its binomial name, after analyzing samples of the bacterium.

This suggestion has found support from studies that compare strains of B. mallei to B. pseudomallei and indicate that their two respective genomes are very similar.

[4] Multilocus sequence typing has revealed that B. mallei most likely evolved from a B. pseudomallei clone reduction.

Many microbiologists are unfamiliar with B. mallei and as a result it has frequently been misidentified as a Pseudomonas species or as a contaminant in a culture.

Antibiotics such as streptomycin, amikacin, tetracycline, doxycycline, carbapenems, ceftazidime, amoxicillin/clavulanic acid, piperacillin, chloramphenicol, and sulfathiazole have been reported to be effective against the bacteria in vitro.

B. mallei, like B. pseudomallei, is also resistant to a number of antibiotics including aminoglycosides, polymyxins, and beta-lactams.

Mice are fairly close to humans in their susceptibility to B. mallei and would be the ideal choice of animal for creating a model for the vaccine.

[4] Burkholderia mallei is responsible for causing glanders disease, which historically mostly affected animals, such as horses, mules, and donkeys, and rarely humans.

[10] B. mallei's ability to live within the host cell makes developing a vaccine against it difficult and complex.

[7] Horses chronically infected with B. mallei with glanders disease typically experience mucus-containing nasal discharge, lung lesions, and nodules around the liver or spleen.

Acute infection in horses results in a high fever, loss of fat or muscle, erosion of the surface of the nasal septum, hemorrhaging or mucus discharge.

Eventually, they get pneumonia, pustules, and abscesses, which prove fatal within a week to 10 days if left untreated by antibiotics.

T cells (nitric oxide) are actually more involved in combating B. mallei in the later stages of its infection of a host.

[4] Many Western countries were able to eliminate the disease through glanders control programs and laws requiring notification of cases of infection to health departments and the destruction of any animal affected with B.

[13] Burkholderia mallei and B. pseudomallei have a history of being on a list of potential biological warfare agents.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention classifies B. mallei as a category B critical biological agent.

[14] In March 2000, one of the first cases since the 1940s of glanders in the United States occurred in a young microbiologist working for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases.

The researcher experienced enlargement of the lymph nodes and a fever which lasted for 10 days even with antibiotic treatment.

After conducting multiple tests on cultures from the researcher's blood and a biopsied portion of a liver abscess, the bacterium was identified as B. mallei.

The case was significant as it showed the difficulty that microbiology laboratories have in identifying bioweapon agents and the potential consequences if measures are not taken to prepare for an actual biological attack.

[3] The Germans' plans for biological warfare started in 1915 on the East Coast of the United States; they intended to infect and kill the livestock that were being sent to the Allies and facilitate the transfer of the disease to humans.

The Russians' biological weapons program also took an interest in B. mallei and conducted field tests with it.