Vibrios on the Half Shell: What the Walrus and the Carpenter Didn't Know

Excerpt

Twenty years ago vibrios from clinical specimens were commonly placed in two categories: Vibrio cholerae, and a poorly defined group that included all other vibrios—the "non-agglutinable vibrios" or "non-cholera vibrios." Since then, bacteriologists have separated some species (Campylobacter, Aeromonas, and Plesiomonas) from the genus Vibrio, teased one Vibrio species after another from the "non-agglutinable vibrio" conglomeration, and explored the ecology of these species. Clinicians and epidemiologists are now describing the organisms' clinical and epidemiologic characteristics, and Bonner and colleagues (2) present the latest of these efforts in this issue. Currently, at least nine Vibrio species have been associated with disease