Cholera strain tied to South Asia
A team of researchers from Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the biotechnology company Pacific Biosciences, with colleagues from Haiti, has determined that the strain of cholera erupting in Haiti matches bacterial samples from South Asia and not those from Latin America. The scientists say that the cholera bacterial strain introduced into Haiti probably came from an infected human or contaminated food or other item from outside of Latin America. It is highly unlikely, they say, that the outbreak was triggered by ocean currents or other climate-related events. This apparent human origin offers some good news: Control measures such as rapid screening for cholera infection and vaccination might limit the risk of cholera epidemics in the future if coordinated on a global level. The findings, which appeared online Dec. 9 in the New England Journal of Medicine, were reported by Matthew Waldor, a Howard Hughes investigator and the...