Survival of classic cholera in Bangladesh.
During the present cholera pandemic the El Tor biotype of Vibrio cholerae has completely displaced the classic biotype, except in Bangladesh. We studied the distribution of these two biotypes in twenty-four rural districts during epidemics in 1988-89; there was clustering of the classic biotype in the southern region and of the El Tor biotype in all other regions. These findings suggest that the southern coastal region is now (and may always have been) the habitat of classic cholera. The selective distribution of V cholerae O1 biotypes in Bangladesh may have been affected by ecological changes occurring in the country.
Community Health Division, International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, Dhaka.
A K
AK
Siddique
A H
AH
Baqui
A
A
Eusof
K
K
Haider
M A
MA
Hossain
I
I
Bashir
K
K
Zaman
D001459:Bangladesh / Q000453:epidemiology; D002771:Cholera / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000382:microbiology; D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D004463:Ecology; D006801:Humans; D015995:Prevalence; D012423:Rural Health; D012703:Serotyping; D013029:Space-Time Clustering; D014734:Vibrio cholerae / Q000145:classification*; D014871:Water Microbiology