Abstract

Cholera remains to be an international threat, with high rates of illness and death. In 2012 and 2013, two cholera outbreak happened in Iran, affecting lots of people. Vibrio cholerae 01 was confirmed as the etiological agent. Source identification and controlling the spread of the cholera disease are two critical approaches in cholera outbreaks. In this study, thirty V. cholerae 01 isolates were selected and has been evaluated for antimicrobial resistant as well as molecular typing by multilocus variable-number tandem repeat analysis (MLVA) method. Twenty-nine (97) isolates were sero-grouped as El Tor (one isolate was classical) and 100 were related to Inaba serotype. All of the isolates were susceptible to ciprofloxacin, chloramphenicol, ampicillin and gentamicin. On the other hand, 60 of the isolates were MDR (resistant to 3 or more classes). There were three resistance patterns. The most prevalent pattern was resistance to streptomycin, erythromycin, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, and tetracycline (ST-SXT-E-T) which was seen in 50 of isolates. Using MLVA method 14 MLVA types were identified. MLVA type 2 (5-7-7-16-15) accounted for 43 of isolates. Isolates with the same genotype often did not have the same antibiogram. Overall, the data indicate that the Iranian V cholerae were MDR and clonaly related. Furthermore, the results of this study shows that MLVA can be used as useful method for V cholerae genotyping in epidemiological investigations. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.