On the emergence of atypical Vibrio cholerae O1 El Tor & cholera epidemic.

摘要

Vibrio cholerae shows a remarkable variability easily seen by the identification of over 200 O serogroups in the species. However, only some lineages, of the O1 and O139 serogroups, have been able, so far, to trigger epidemic and pandemic cholera. The clinical Ol strains were further classified, on the basis of phenotypic and genotypic markers, into two biotypes: classical, which had driven, at least, the sixty cholera pandemic, and El Tor, the aetiological agent of the current cholera pandemic (7th cholera pandemic). The E1 Tor strains were first isolated on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi in 1961 and after that outbreaks, due to this lineage, started occurring in Bangladesh, India and Russia. Only more than a decade from its beginning the 7th cholera pandemic reached the North of Africa continent .