Cholera: a paradigm for understanding emergence, virulence and temporal patterns of disease

Published on October 29, 2009   57 min

A selection of talks on Clinical Practice

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0:00
Hello. My name is John Mekalanos. I'm at Harvard Medical School and have been doing research on cholera for nearly 30 years now and today what I'd like to do is present a lecture on cholera with the focus point being the use of this organism through the years as a model system for understanding the emergence of bacterial pathogens meaning by that the process by which an organism that is not a pathogen becomes a pathogen for humans. The virulence mechanisms of this particular organism is again a paradigm for understanding virulence mechanisms in general for pathogenic bacteria and finally, some research that I've been involved in that has tried to understand temporal patterns of disease. This is an epidemic disease capable of global pandemics and through the years the field has noticed that cholera epidemics come and go with the seasonality and the beginning and ending of a cholera epidemic is quite dramatic in natural endemic areas, such as Bangladesh and India. I think we're starting to get a better appreciation for the factors that cause seasonality and in particular other factors that result in cholera epidemics ending, which is an exciting new development in the field.
1:18
So, here's an outline of the lecture I'll give today. I'm going to touch briefly on the history of the disease and the nature of the organism Vibrio cholerae, the bacterial agent. I'll talk a little bit about the pathobiology of the disease and then focus in on the molecular pathogenesis, the factors that are involved and actually causing the disease that the bacterium produces. We'll spend some time talking about the genetic basis for virulence that is the genetic elements that encode these factors. Then, finally, we'll move to the issue of the epidemiology of cholera and the role of bacteriophages of bacterial viruses in influencing the temporal pattern of disease and finally, I'll touch upon immunity and some progress that is being made in vaccine development for cholera.

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