Standardized mycobacterial interspersed repetitive-unit-variable-number tandem repeat (MIRU-VNTR) typing based on 15 and 24 loci recently has been proposed for Mycobacterium tuberculosis genotyping. So far, this optimized system has been assessed in a single, 1-year population-based study performed in Germany (M. C. Oelemann, R. Diel, V. Vatin, W. Haas, S. Rusch-Gerdes, C. Locht, S. Niemann, an...

Determining the genetic diversity of M. tuberculosis strains allows identification of the distinct Mycobacterium tuberculosis genotypes responsible for tuberculosis in different regions. Several studies have reported the genetic diversity of M. tuberculosis strains in Mexico, but little information is available from the state of Jalisco. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the gen...

Definitive and rapid diagnosis of extrapulmonary tuberculosis (EPTB) is challenging since conventional techniques have limitations due to the paucibacillary nature of the disease. To increase the sensitivity of detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) in EPTB specimens, we performed a nested PCR assay targeting several genes of MTB on EPTB specimens. A total of 100 clinical specimens from ...

Repetitive-sequence-based PCR (rep-PCR) is useful for generating DNA fingerprints of diverse bacterial and fungal species. Rep-PCR amplicon fingerprints represent genomic segments lying between repetitive sequences. A commercial system that electrophoretically separates rep-PCR amplicons on microfluidic chips, and provides computer-generated readouts of results has been adapted for use with Myc...

The rapid identification of mycobacterial DNA in clinical samples by PCR can be useful in the diagnosis of tuberculous infections, but several large studies have found that the sensitivity of this approach is not better than that of culture. In order to improve the sensitivity of detection of mycobacterial DNA in clinical specimens from patients with paucibacillary forms of tuberculosis, we hav...

Over recent years, there has been an increasing acknowledgment of the diversity that exists among Mycobacterium tuberculosis clinical isolates. To facilitate comparative studies aimed at deciphering the relevance of this diversity to human disease, an unambiguous and easily interpretable method of strain classification is required. Presently, the most effective means of assigning isolates into ...

To determine a detailed picture of tuberculosis (TB) epidemiology in Hamburg, Germany, 423 Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex isolates from 77.0% of all patients with culture-confirmed TB diagnosed from 1997 to 1999 in Hamburg were analyzed by IS6110 DNA fingerprinting. IS6110 restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) clusters were assumed to have arisen from recent transmission. Results ...

To study the characteristics of tuberculosis (TB) in foreign-born individuals living in Hamburg, Germany, and to discover in what way foreign-born individuals contribute to the incidence of TB in Hamburg, an in-depth epidemiological study was performed by a combination of classical and molecular methods. In total, 796 patients with TB were analyzed between 1997 and 2002 (88.7% of all patients w...

Discovery of genotypic markers associated with increased transmissibility in Mycobacterium tuberculosis would represent an important step in advancing mycobacterial virulence studies. M. tuberculosis strains may be classified into one of three genotypes on the basis of the presence of specific nucleotide substitutions in codon 463 of the katG gene (katG-463) and codon 95 of the gyrA gene (gyrA-...