IS6110 fingerprinting of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the standard identification method in studies on transmission of tuberculosis. However, intensive epidemiological investigation may fail to confirm transmission links between patients clustered by IS6110-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) typing. We applied typing based on variable numbers of tandem repeats (VNTRs) of mycobacte...

OBJECTIVES To systematically review the evidence for the impact of study design and setting on the interpretation of tuberculosis (TB) transmission using clustering derived from Mycobacterial Interspersed Repetitive Units-Variable Number Tandem Repeats (MIRU-VNTR) strain typing. DATA SOURCES MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINHAL, Web of Science and Scopus were searched for articles published before 21st Oc...

The elimination of leprosy continues to be a challenge, with the disease remaining endemic in several countries. India accounts for the highest number of cases, and the identification of child cases indicates recent transmission. Genetic markers, like variable-number tandem repeats (VNTRs) and single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), have been identified to track transmission of the pathogen Myc...

Ischemic stroke (IS) is a multifactorial disorder, and genetic factors act as important contributors to its onset and progression. Inflammation is a key event that is closely associated with the pathophysiology of IS. The association of genetic polymorphisms of inflammatory cytokines with IS remains poorly understood. We investigated the relationship between the variable number of tandem repeat...

5-Fluorouracil (5FU), a widely used chemotherapeutic drug, inhibits the DNA replicative enzyme, thymidylate synthase (Tyms). Prior studies implicated a VNTR (variable numbers of tandem repeats) polymorphism in the 5'-untranslated region (5'-UTR) of the TYMS gene as a determinant of Tyms expression in tumors and normal tissues and proposed that these VNTR genotypes could help decide fluoropyrimi...

Variable-number tandem repeat (VNTR) and spoligotyping analyses were used to assess transmission of Mycobacterium bovis between humans. VNTR was more discriminatory than spoligotyping. Low case numbers, despite a substantial animal reservoir, and resolution of all isolates provided no evidence of recent human-to-human transmission or recent significant infection from animals.

Histophilus somni (Haemophilus somnus) is an important pathogen of cattle that is responsible for respiratory disease, septicemia, and systemic diseases such as thrombotic meningoencephalitis, myocarditis, and abortion. A variety of virulence factors have been identified in H. somni, including compositional and antigenic variation of the lipooligosaccharide (LOS). Phosphorylcholine (ChoP) has b...

To inform development of tuberculosis (TB) control strategies, we characterized a total of 2,261 Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex isolates by using multiple phenotypic and molecular markers, including polymorphisms in repetitive sequences (spoligotyping and variable-number tandem repeats [VNTRs]) and large sequence and single-nucleotide polymorphisms. The Beijing family was strongly associate...

BACKGROUND The STin2 VNTR polymorphism has a variable number of tandem repeats in intron 2 of the serotonin transporter gene. We aimed to explore the relationship between STin2 VNTR polymorphism and lifelong premature ejaculation (LPE). MATERIAL AND METHODS We recruited a total of 115 outpatients who complained of ejaculating prematurely and who were diagnosed as LPE, and 101 controls without P...

Francisella tularensis, the etiological agent of tularemia, is found throughout the Northern hemisphere. After analyzing the F. tularensis genomic sequence for potential variable-number tandem repeats (VNTRs), we developed a multilocus VNTR analysis (MLVA) typing system for this pathogen. Variation was detected at six VNTR loci in a set of 56 isolates from California, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Ore...