Austrian Hygiene Award 2017 to Carina Pretzer

Within the frame of the 24th Dosch-Symposium on hospital hygiene, which takes place at Velden am Wörthersee from May 15 to 17, the Austrian Hygiene Award 2017 will be awarded to our former diploma student Carina Pretzer. The distinguished publication is a result of our ICC Water & Health Cooperation.

The Austrian Hygiene Award 2017 will be awarded to Mag. Carina Pretzer, our former diploma student at the Interuniversity Cooperation Centre for Water and Health (ICC Water & Health) from the Department for Water Hygiene. The title of the distinguished publication is "High genetic diversity of Vibrio cholerae in the European lake Neusiedler See is associated with intensive recombination in the reed habitat and the long-distance transfer of strains” and was published in January 2017 in the Top-Journal „Environmental Microbiology“*.

With great international participation and the help of another specialist from the TU Wien (Prof. Druzhinina) Carina investigated the genetic diversity of Vibrio cholerae strains in Lake Neusiedler See. All of the Vibrio cholerae strains in the lake can be classified as non-cholera vibrios (NCV), as they are not able to cause cholera due to their genetic background. However, they are responsible for several ear and wound infections of bathing guests each year in the lake, with one case of a fatal sepsis of a chemotherapy patient. Currently, NCV infections experience increasing topicality in Europe, because due to climate change and concomitant increase in water temperatures, significant increases of NCV infections have been reported.

In this study we could show that in Lake Neusiedler See a genetically highly diverse population of different V. cholerae strains is present, which is especially high in the reed stand of the lake. It can be assumed that the lake is a hot-spot of V. cholerae in Middle Europe due to its specific chemophysical composition (slight salinity, high pH, high nutrient concentrations, high temperatures).

By comparing the strains with strains from different European countries it could be shown that the observed high diversity is on the one hand based on the presence of an endemic population that has been evolving by intensive genetic recombination, and, on the other hand, by the import of strains from a variety of European countries. Specifically, strains from Sweden, the Netherlands, France and Romania had a very close genetic relationship with the endemic Austrian strains, which can only be explained by the transport of strains between different European aquatic ecosystems.

Due to the fact that the lake Neusiedler See – and especially the reed belt – is an important habitat for a high number of different waterfowl species, it can be assumed that birds may play a significant role in the transport of strains between countries. This study is thus the first which elucidates the main mechanisms for the spreading and evolution of these increasingly emerging pathogens within the European context with the background of climate change.


* Pretzer C, Druzhinina IS, Amaro C, Benediktsdóttir E, Hedenström I, Hervio-Heath D, Huhulescu S, Schets FM, Farnleitner AH, Kirschner AKT (2017): High genetic diversity of Vibrio cholerae in the European lake Neusiedler See is associated with intensive recombination in the reed habitat and the long-distance transfer of strains.Environmental Microbiology 19(1): 328-344