The number of worldwide infections caused by pathogenic Vibrio spp. have steadily increased in recent years. Vibrio spp. are ubiquitous Gram-negative bacteria found naturally in marine and estuarine waters, including aquaculture settings, and are a leading cause of seafood-borne bacterial illness. The increasing incidence of vibrioses in marine animals and humans has been linked to rising seawater temperature due to global warming and the growing global trade of seafood. The emergence of new highly pathogenic clones of V. parahaemolyticus in Southeast Asia and their recent pandemic spread underline that vibrioses may represent an emerging but neglected zoonotic disease in Germany and other countries. In order to improve our understanding of climate-driven outbreaks of vibrioses and to assess the risk for the German population, it requires a systematic surveillance programme for non-cholera Vibrio illnesses, standardized, validated, fit-for-purpose methodologies, experimental data on the molecular determinants of host-specific pathogenicity and transmission, and environmental data on the population dynamics and virulence characteristics of these pathogens.
The fourth conference of the biology of vibrios …
11/02/2011
11/28/2012
