RESUMO
OBJECTIVE: To study virulence and regulatory genes (hlyA, ctxB, tcpI) in clinical strains of Vibrio cholerae (V. cholerae), simultaneously. METHODS: Three important genes, tcpI, hlyA and ctxB were used for detection of toxigenic and pathogenic V. cholera by chain reaction assay method. RESULTS: According to the results of the PCR, the incidence of hlyA, tcpI, and ctxB genes in clinical isolates was obtained as 94.7% (72 sample), 90.8% (69 sample), and 92.1% (70 sample), respectively. Five strains possessed all genes except ctxB, six strains possessed all genes except tcpI, four strains possessed all genes except hlyA, one strain possessed only hlyA and 60 strains contained a combination of three genes, Including hlyA, ctxB and tcpI. CONCLUSIONS: Result show that this method could be reliable to detect toxigenic-pathogenic strains of V. cholerae in Iran.