[Imported cholera infection caused by a new nonagglutinating cholera agent].

Within 24 hours of returning from a five-week holiday in Pakistan a 15-year-old girl developed vomiting and massive diarrhoea leading to severe dehydration with hypovolaemic shock. The diastolic blood pressure was no longer measurable and prerenal renal failure occurred with a serum creatinine of 4.4 mg/dl and metabolic acidosis (pH 7.21, base excess-16.9 mmol). Initially treatment consisted of rehydration (day 1: 9280 ml, day 2: 4850 ml). The patient's condition rapidly improved and she had voluminous stools. A concurrent urinary infection due to Klebsiella pneumoniae was first treated with cotrimoxazole. As a new strain of Vibrio cholerae, serogroup O 139, was isolated from stool, treatment was changed to tetracycline (50 mg/kg daily). Regaining a good general state she was transferred to an isolation ward on the 6th hospital day. The isolated cholera organism belongs to a nonagglutinating serogroup which is indistinguishable clinically and epidemiologically from the classical Vibrio strains which cause cholera. Since the end of 1992 this new serogroup has been causing an explosive spread of cholera in Bangladesh and India.