WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, CLAWED
As suspected, Nepalese soldiers traveling to Haiti to aide in the recovery efforts after the January 2010 earthquake are the source of the deadly cholera outbreak that killed more than 6,000 people and left some 300,000 seriously ill, according to a study published today (August 23) in mBio.
Paul Keim, a biology professor at Northern Arizona University and director of the Pathogen Genomics Division of the non-profit Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), and his colleagues used whole genome sequencing to compare 24 Nepalese samples of Vibrio cholerae, the causative agent of cholera, with 10 samples of the bacteria from Haiti. All the samples showed high sequence similarity, with some that “were almost identical,” the researchers report. The results confirm earlier suspicions that peacekeepers from Nepal ...
