Cholera is an acute infection caused by ingestion of food or water contaminated with the bacillus Vibrio cholerae. It is an extremely virulent disease that can cause severe diarrhea and death from dehydration within hours if no treatment is put in place.
The treatment essentially consists of compensating for digestive losses of water and electrolytes. Antibiotic treatment can also be used in addition.
Strengthen surveillance
But according to work by the Pasteur Institute published this December 12 in the New England Journal of Medicine, a bacteria identified in Yemen in 2018-2019, then detected in Lebanon, Kenya, Tanzania and as far as Mayotte, where it caused an epidemic between March and July 2024 can survive ten different antibiotics, including two of the three drugs usually used to treat cholera.
The progression of this strain worries experts. Professor François-Xavier Weill, who directs the National Reference Center for Vibrios at the Pasteur Institute, underlines the urgency of strengthening global surveillance of cholera and its behavior towards antibiotics in real time.
Thus he warns: “ If this new strain which is currently spreading were to acquire additional resistance to tetracycline (the last antibiotic still effective, editor’s note), this would compromise any oral antibiotic treatment. »
Source : Pasteur Institute
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