The first outbreak of acute diarrhea due to a pandemic strain of Vibrio parahaemolyticus O3:K6 in Kolkata, India

Since 1996, infections caused by Vibrio parahaemolyticus have increased globally. Outbreak and/or sporadic cases of diarrhea caused by V. parahaemolyticus have been reported from India, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, the USA, Laos, Korea, Chile, Bangladesh, Russia, Thailand, Spain, France, and Vietnam. This increase in incidence appears to be related to the emergence of a new clone belonging to the O3:K6 serovar, which has pandemic potential. Due to its spread in many countries with identical phenotypic and genotypic features, the recently emerged V. parahaemolyticus has now been termed a ‘pandemic strain’, which can be identified by group-specific GS-PCR based on the sequence variation in the toxRS gene.1Matsumoto C. Okuda J. Ishibashi M. Iwanaga M. Garg P. Ramamurthy T. et al.Pandemic spread of…