Molecular epidemiology and origin of cholera reemergence in Italy and Albania in the 1990s

In 1994 a cholera epidemic occurred in Italy and Albania after more than a decade of case absence. To investigate genotypic characteristics and the origin of the epidemic strains, 110 Vibrio cholerae O1 El Tor isolates from Italy and Albania were studied by randomly amplified polymorphic DNA analysis (RAPD), BglI ribotyping, and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) of genomic DNA. The Italian and Albanian strains were all ribotype 6 and their RAPD and PFGE patterns were identical as well. These findings indicated that the 1994 isolates belonged to the same clone and that the clone was part of the larger global spread of epidemic ribotype 6 strains, which started in southern Asia in 1990.