 future studies will be helpful to ascertain the decisive use of phages to treat diarrheal diseases. Cholera typing phages used in this study were found nonreactive (inability to cause bacterial lysis) to other commensals which makes them more suitable than antibiotics to manage cholera outbreak.
| Conclusion|| |
We have demonstrated that phage typing is still an internationally recognized method of choice for characterizing circulating strains. The present study has identified and characterized dominant cholera strains circulating in India throughout the year. This knowledge will be helpful to design a novel strategy to manage cholera outbreak in different parts of the country. Moreover, this study indirectly supports the use of phages as a cost-effective alternative to control the disease and antibiotic resistance burden of V. cholerae strains. We also advocate the use of these typing phages by directly applying them to water bodies and drinking water supply systems to reduce the burden of cholera incidence in the cholera hot spot region in India or anywhere in the world.
We would like to thank Dr. B. L Sarkar for his enthusiastic support, guidance and helpful advice in preparation of this manuscript. We are thankful to Mr. Motilal Gupta for technical support. This study was supported by the Indian Council of Medical Research as an Institutional service project.
Financial support and sponsorship
This study was funded by ICMR-NICED institutional grant.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
| References|| |
Sack DA, Sack RB, Nair GB, Siddique AK. Cholera. Lancet 2004;363:223-33.
Clemens JD, Nair GB, Ahmed T, Qadri F, Holmgren J. Cholera. Lancet 2017;390:1539-49.
Mandal S, Mandal MD, Pal NK. Cholera: A great global concern. Asian Pac J Trop Med 2011;4:573-80.
Sur D, Dutta P, Nair GB, Bhattacharya SK. Severe cholera outbreak following floods in a northern district of West Bengal. Indian J Med Res 2000;112:178-82.
Feng L, Reeves PR, Lan R, Ren Y, Gao C, Zhou Z, et al
. A recalibrated molecular clock and independent origins for the cholera pandemic clones. PLoS One 2008;3:e4053.
Hu D, Liu B, Feng L, Ding P, Guo X, Wang M, et al
. Origins of the current seventh cholera pandemic. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2016;113:E7730-9.
Barzilay EJ, Schaad N, Magloire R, Mung KS, Boncy J, Dahourou GA, et al
. Cholera surveillance during the Haiti epidemic-the first 2 years. N
Engl J Med 2013;368:599-609.
Ali M, Nelson AR, Lopez AL, Sack DA. Updated global burden of cholera in endemic countries. PLoS Negl Trop Dis 2015;9:e0003832.
Ali M, Sen Gupta S, Arora N, Khasnobis P, Venkatesh S, Sur D, et al
. Identification of burden hotspots and risk factors for cholera in India: An observational study. PLoS One 2017;12:e0183100.
Letchumanan V, Chan KG, Pusparajah P, Saokaew S, Duangjai A, Goh BH, et al
. Insights into bacteriophage application in controlling Vibrio
species. Front Microbiol 2016;7:1114.
Naser IB, Hoque MM, Abdullah A, Bari SM, Ghosh AN, Faruque SM. Environmental bacteriophages active on biofilms and planktonic forms of toxigenic Vibrio cholerae
: Potential relevance in cholera epidemiology. PLoS One 2017;12:e0180838.
Faruque SM, Naser IB, Islam MJ, Faruque AS, Ghosh AN, Nair GB, et al
. Seasonal epidemics of cholera inversely correlate with the prevalence of environmental cholera phages. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2005;102:1702-7.
Brüssow H, Canchaya C, Hardt WD. Phages and the evolution of bacterial pathogens: From genomic rearrangements to lysogenic conversion. Microbiol Mol Biol Rev 2004;68:560-602.
Hassan F, Kamruzzaman M, Mekalanos JJ, Faruque SM. Satellite phage TLCφ enables toxigenic conversion by CTX phage through dif site alteration. Nature 2010;467:982-5.
Waldor MK, Mekalanos JJ. Lysogenic conversion by a filamentous phage encoding cholera toxin. Science 1996;272:1910-4.
Faruque SM, Mekalanos JJ. Phage-bacterial interactions in the evolution of toxigenic Vibrio cholerae
. Virulence 2012;3:556-65.
Basu S, Mukerjee S. Bacteriophage typing of Vibrio
eltor. Experientia 1968;24:299-300.
Chattopadhyay DJ, Sarkar 