Team:UT-Dallas/temp

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“We have witnessed in our days the birth of a new pestilence, which, in the short space of fourteen years, has desolated the fairest portions of the globe, and swept off at least fifty MILLIONS of our race. It has mastered every variety of climate, surmounted every natural barrier, conquered every people. It has not, like the simoon, blasted life and then passed away; the cholera, like the small-pox or plague, takes root in the soil which has once possessed.” (The London and Paris Observer, 11/27/1831)

Introduction

Cholera is a gastrointestinal disease caused by a toxin released by aquatic bacterium Vibrio cholerae. Symptoms of cholera are acute watery diarrhea and vomiting. In severe cases, patients may show signs of severe dehydration, such as sunken eyes, decreased skin turgor, muscle cramping, and decreased blood pressure. If left untreated, severe cases can result in death within a few hours. There are two serotypes of V. cholerae responsible for the global cholera pandemics: O1 and O139. O1 has two biotypes - classical and El Tor. Non-O1 and non-O139 V. cholerae infections can cause similar but with milder symptoms (1). There have been seven recorded cholera pandemics beginning in 1816 and many more outbreaks in that time. Today, cholera infects approximately 3-5 million people every year and between 100,000-120,000 of these cases are fatal (1). Although cases of cholera are rare in developed countries, it continues to be a public health concern in regions with underdeveloped water treatment practices because of its relatively high death rate and persistence in the environment.




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References


1. World Health Organization. (2014). Cholera (Fact sheet No. 107). Retrieved from http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs107/en/
2. Rajanna, C., Wang, J., Zhang, D., Xu, Z., Ali, A., Hou, Y.-M., and Karaolis, D. K. R. The Vibrio Pathogenicity Island of Epidemic Vibrio cholerae Forms Precise Extrachromosomal Circular Excision Products. J. Bacteriol. December 2003 185:23 6893-6901
3. Holmgren J. Actions of cholera toxin and the prevention and treatment of cholera. Nature. 1981 Jul 30;292(5822):413–417.
4. Krukonis, E.S., Yu, R.R., Dirita, V.J. The Vibrio cholerae ToxR/TcpP/ToxT virulence cascade: distinct roles for two membrane-localized transcriptional activators on a single promoter. Mol Microbiol. 2000 Oct;38(1):67-84
5. Herrington, D.A., Hall, R.H., Losonsky, G., Mekalanos, J.J., Taylor, R.K., and Levine, M.M., Toxin, toxin-coregulated pili, and the toxR regulon are essential for Vibrio cholerae pathogenesis in humans. J Exp Med Oct 1 1988 168:1487-1492
6. Peterson, K.M., Mekalanos, J.J., Characterization of the Vibrio cholerae ToxR regulon: identification of novel genes involved in intestinal colonization. Infect Immun. 1988 Nov;56(11):2822-9.
7. Abedon, S.T., Thomas-Abedon, C., Thomas, A., Mazure, H. Bacteriophage prehistory: Is or is not Hankin, 1896, a phage reference? Bacteriophage. 2011 May-Jun; 1(3): 174–178



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