Vibrio cholerae

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Recommended: 37. Vibrio cholerae and cholera – the history and global impact archived December 16, 2008, at the Wayback Machine

Introduction to Microbiology

Pathogen paper

Vibrio cholera

Nazarbayev University

Taxonomy and Morphology

Vibrio cholerae is a gram-negative bacterium which is causative agent for the diarrheal disease cholera. Vibrio cholerae is a member of the Vibrionaceae family, which is a facultative anaerobic and is capable of respiratory and fermentative metabolism. It does not form spores and its motility is due to the single polar flagellum. Vibrios are highly halophylic and are very sensitive to low pH. (Nair, n.d.)

These bacteria belong to O antigenic group and strains of O group 1 (O1) cause cholera. Strains of O1 are subdivided into two biotypes, classical and El Tor, and into two major serotypes, Inaba and Ogawa. The other strains, different from O1, are called non-O1 strains which do not have potential to cause epidemics. However, new variant V.cholerae 0139 has been evolved from serogroup O1 to a non-O1 serougroup by horizontal gene transfer. V. cholerae O1 and O139 are currently believed to be the only serogroups causing epidemic cholera, characterized by severe watery diarrhea. (Formadi, 2007)

History and Epidemiology

The history of cholera begins from 1817 when the first epidemic was reported in India and then cholera was spread outside the Indian subcontinent along trade routes to the west leading to the first pandemic. From that time seven pandemics took place worldwide. In 1961 the last one occurred in Indonesia and then spread to the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East, then moved on to Africa in the 1970s and reached South America in the early 1990. The epidemiological study of John Snow in 1854 showed the correlation between cholera and drinking of contaminated water. (Sack, etc., 2004) Later...

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...Galveston (TX): University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston; 1996. Chapter 24.Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK8407/

Formadi H. 2007. Vibrio cholera. Retrieved from: http://ci.vbi.vt.edu/pathinfo/pathogens/V_cholerae_2.html

Nair G. n.d. Vibrio cholerae. World health organization. Guidelines for drinking-water quality. Retrieved from: http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/admicrob6.pdf

Reidl J. and Klose K. 2002. Vibrio cholerae and cholera: out of the water and into the host. FEMS Microbiology Reviews 26, 125-139. Rertieved from: http://ezproxy.library.nu.edu.kz:2126/doi/10.1111/j.1574-6976.2002.tb00605.x/pdf

Sack D., Sack R., Nair G., and Siddique A. Cholera. 2004. Lancet, 363(9404), 223-233. Retrieved from: http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=4a213450-0d66-48ab-aee8-ba80898fa889%40sessionmgr12&vid=2&hid=121

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