Kazakhstan is one of the 14 countries with a high rate of morbidity due to multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) in WHO European region. The aim of our study was to characterize mutations associated with drug resistance to rifampicin and isoniazid in Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates from Kazakhstan. M. tuberculosis strains were isolated from TB patients in different regions of Kazakhstan...

An oligonucleotide chip (Combichip Mycobacteria chip) detecting specific mutations in the rpoB, katG, and inhA genes of Mycobacterium tuberculosis was compared with conventional antimicrobial susceptibility results. The probes detecting drug resistance were as follows: 7 wild-type and 13 mutant probes for rifampin and 2 wild-type and 3 mutant probes for isoniazid. Target DNA of M. tuberculosis ...

Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates cultured from 6 patients associated with an isoniazid-resistant M. tuberculosis outbreak acquired rifampicin resistance. The rpoB gene sequence showed that resistance was associated with rare mutations in each isolate. Three isolates had a mutation outside the rifampicin resistance-determining region.

Early detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) and markers conveying drug resistance can have a beneficial impact on preventive public health actions. We describe here a new molecular point-of-care (POC) system, the Genedrive, which is based on simple sample preparation combined with PCR to detect MTBC and simultaneously detect mutation markers in the rpoB gene directly from raw s...

We have previously reported the establishment of a Staphylococcus aureus laboratory strain, 10 3d1, having reduced susceptibility to daptomycin and heterogeneous vancomycin-intermediate S. aureus (VISA) phenotype. The strain was generated in vitro by serial daptomycin selection (Camargo, I. L., H. M. Neoh, L. Cui, and K. Hiramatsu, Antimicrob. Agents Chemother. 52:4289-4299, 2008). Here we expl...

INTRODUCTION Tuberculosis remains the leading causes of death worldwide with frequencies of mutations in rifampicin and isoniazid resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates varying according to geographical location. There is limited information in Zimbabwe on specific antibiotic resistance gene mutation patterns in MTB and hence, increased rate of discordant results and mortality due to ina...

Rickettsia prowazekii, the causative agent of epidemic typhus, is an obligate intracellular parasitic bacterium that grows directly within the cytoplasm of the eucaryotic host cell. The absence of techniques for genetic manipulation hampers the study of this organism's unique biology and pathogenic mechanisms. To establish the feasibility of genetic manipulation in this organism, we identified ...

Both the probability of a mutation occurring and the ability of the mutant to persist will influence the distribution of mutants that arise in a population. We studied the interaction of these factors for the in vitro selection of rifampicin (RIF)-resistant mutants of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. We characterised two series of spontaneous RIF-resistant in vitro mutants from isoniazid (INH)-sensi...

To improve multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) detection, we successfully introduced the rpoB gene mutation line probe assay into the national laboratory in Latvia, a country with epidemic MDR-TB. The assay detected rifampin resistance with 91% sensitivity and 96% specificity within 1 to 5 days (vs. 12-47 days for BACTEC).

A low rate of resistance (0.24%) to rifabutin was noted in Helicobacter pylori strains isolated from 414 Japanese patients. The only rifabutin-resistant strain detected showed a point mutation in the rpoB gene and was isolated from a patient with a history of rifampin treatment for pulmonary tuberculosis.