Extremely virulent disease: new antibiotic-resistant cholera strain worries scientists

Choléra : une nouvelle souche résistante aux antibiotiques inquiète les scientifiques

Des chercheurs de l’Institut Pasteur, en collaboration avec le Centre hospitalier de Mayotte, alertent sur la diffusion, depuis le Yémen, d'une souche hautement résistante aux antibiotiques de l'agent du choléra. Elle résiste notamment à deux des trois médicaments habituellement utilisés.

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Cholera is an acute infection caused by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the bacillus Vibrio cholerae. It is an extremely virulent disease that can cause severe diarrhea and death from dehydration within hours if no treatment is initiated.

Management consists essentially of replacing digestive losses of water and electrolytes. Antibiotic treatment can also be used in addition.

Strengthen surveillance

But according to a study by the Pasteur Institute published on December 12 in the New England Journal of Medicine, a bacterium identified in Yemen in 2018-2019, then detected in Lebanon, Kenya, Tanzania and as far as Mayotte, where it caused an epidemic between March and July 2024, can survive ten different antibiotics, including two of the three drugs usually used to treat cholera.

The progression of this strain worries experts. Professor François-Xavier Weill, who heads the National Reference Centre for Vibrions at the Pasteur Institute, stresses the urgency of strengthening global surveillance of cholera and its behaviour towards antibiotics in real time. He warns: “If this new strain that is currently spreading were to acquire additional resistance to tetracycline (the last antibiotic that is still effective, editor's note), this would compromise any oral antibiotic treatment.“