Kate S. Baker, Timothy J. Dallman, Philip Ashton, Martin Day et al.
Background Shigellosis is an acute, severe bacterial colitis that, in high-income countries, is typically associated with travel to high-risk regions (Africa, Asia, and Latin America). Since the 1970s, shigellosis has also been reported as a sexually transmitted infection in men who have sex with me...
G. Balakrish Nair, Firdausi Qadri, Jan Holmgren, Ann–Mari Svennerholm et al.
We determined the types of cholera toxin (CT) produced by a collection of 185 Vibrio cholerae O1 strains isolated in Bangladesh over the past 45 years. All of the El Tor strains of V. cholerae O1 isolated since 2001 produced CT of the classical biotype, while those isolated before 2001 produced CT o...
Alexander van Geen, Habibul Ahsan, A. Horneman, Ratan Dhar et al.
OBJECTIVE: To survey tube wells and households in Araihazar upazila, Bangladesh, to set the stage for a long-term epidemiological study of the consequences of chronic arsenic exposure. METHODS: Water samples and household data were collected over a period of 4 months in 2000 from 4997 contiguous tub...
Mark A. Jensen, Shah M. Faruque, John J. Mekalanos, Bruce R. Levin
Cholera is a waterborne diarrheal disease that continues to plague the developing world. Individuals become infected by consuming water from reservoirs contaminated by virulent strains of the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. Epidemiological and environmental observations of a cholera outbreak in Dhaka, Ba...
R. Bradley Sack, Abdullah Siddique, Ira M. Longini, Azhar Nizam et al.
How Vibrio cholerae spreads around the world and what determines its seasonal peaks in endemic areas are not known. These features of cholera have been hypothesized to be primarily the result of environmental factors associated with aquatic habitats that can now be identified. Since 1997, fortnightl...
Myron M. Levine, Dilruba Nasrin, Sozinho Acácio, Quique Bassat et al.
BACKGROUND: The Global Enteric Multicenter Study (GEMS) was a 3-year case-control study that measured the burden, aetiology, and consequences of moderate-to-severe diarrhoea (MSD) in children aged 0-59 months. GEMS-1A, a 12-month follow-on study, comprised two parallel case-control studies, one asse...
Shah M. Faruque, Nityananda Chowdhury, Muhammad Kamruzzaman, Michelle Dziejman et al.
To understand the evolutionary events and possible selection mechanisms involved in the emergence of pathogenic Vibrio cholerae, we analyzed diverse strains of V. cholerae isolated from environmental waters in Bangladesh by direct enrichment in the intestines of adult rabbits and by conventional lab...
Shah M. Faruque, John J. Mekalanos
The identification of accessory genetic elements (plasmids, phages and chromosomal 'pathogenicity islands') encoding virulence-associated genes has facilitated our efforts to understand the origination of pathogenic microorganisms. Toxigenic Vibrio cholerae, the etiologic agent of cholera, represent...
James E. Bina, Jun Zhu, Michelle Dziejman, Shah M. Faruque et al.
Toxigenic Vibrio cholerae cause cholera, a severe diarrheal disease responsible for significant morbidity and mortality worldwide. Two determinants, cholera enterotoxin (CT) and toxin coregulated pilus (TCP) are critical factors responsible for this organism's virulence. The genes for these virulenc...
Shah M. Faruque, David A. Sack, R. Bradley Sack, Rita R. Colwell et al.
The emergence of Vibrio cholerae O139 Bengal during 1992-1993 was associated with large epidemics of cholera in India and Bangladesh and, initially, with a total displacement of the existing V. cholerae O1 strains. However, the O1 strains reemerged in 1994 and initiated a series of disappearance and...
Shah M. Faruque, John J. Mekalanos
Understanding the genetic and ecological factors which support the emergence of new clones of pathogenic bacteria is vital to develop preventive measures. Vibrio cholerae the causative agent of cholera epidemics represents a paradigm for this process in that this organism evolved from environmental ...
M. John Albert, Shah M. Faruque, Abu Syed Golam Faruque, P K Neogi et al.
Diarrheal diseases are highly prevalent in Bangladesh. However, the relative contribution of diarrheagenic Escherichia coli organisms--those that are enterotoxigenic (ETEC), enteropathogenic (EPEC), enteroinvasive, enterohemorrhagic, enteroaggregative, and diffuse adherent--to diarrhea in Bangladesh...
Soumen Chakraborty, Asish K. Mukhopadhyay, Rupak K. Bhadra, Amar N. Ghosh et al.
The virulence of a pathogen is dependent on a discrete set of genetic determinants and their well-regulated expression. The ctxAB and tcpA genes are known to play a cardinal role in maintaining virulence in Vibrio cholerae, and these genes are believed to be exclusively associated with clinical stra...
Kimberley D. Seed, Shah M. Faruque, John J. Mekalanos, Stephen B. Calderwood et al.
The Vibrio cholerae lipopolysaccharide O1 antigen is a major target of bacteriophages and the human immune system and is of critical importance for vaccine design. We used an O1-specific lytic bacteriophage as a tool to probe the capacity of V. cholerae to alter its O1 antigen and identified a novel...
Pradip Kumar Bardhan, Shah M. Faruque, Aliya Naheed, David A. Sack
In 1999, a review of the literature for 1966-1997 suggested that ≈1.1 million persons die annually of shigellosis, including ≈880,000 in Asia. Our recent review of the literature for 1990-2009 indicates that ≈125 million shigellosis cases occur annually in Asia, of which ≈14,000 are fatal. This esti...