title: First molecular epidemiological study of tuberculosis in Benin.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To assess the diversity of Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains in Cotonou, Benin, and the risk factors associated with clustering.
  
  
  METHODS
  We analysed one sputum sample from 194 consecutive new pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) cases using two genotyping methods: spoligotyping and the 12 loci mycobacterial interspersed repetitive unit-variable number of tandem repeats (MIRU-VNTR). The data obtained were compared to the SpolDB4.0 database.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We have found that spoligotype 61, highly predominant in West Africa, was also the most prevalent strain in Cotonou. We observed that the Beijing family represented 10.3% of strains and was associated with resistance to streptomycin. We also confirmed that combining spoligotyping and MIRU-VNTR provided a higher discriminatory power than the two techniques used individually.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Spoligotype 61 and Beijing genotype are the most prevalent genotypes of M. tuberculosis in Cotonou.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Référence des Mycobactéries, Cotonou, Bénin; Mycobacteriology Unit, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium. affolabi_dissou@yahoo.fr
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Affolabi
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Anyo
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Faïhun
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Sanoussi
authors.forename: I C
authors.initials: IC
authors.lastname: Shamputa
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Rigouts
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kestens
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Anagonou
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Portaels
mesh_terms: D015373:Bacterial Typing Techniques; D001541:Benin / Q000453:epidemiology; D016172:DNA Fingerprinting; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification; D005260:Female; D014644:Genetic Variation; D006801:Humans; D020071:Interspersed Repetitive Sequences; D008297:Male; D018598:Minisatellite Repeats; D009169:Mycobacterium tuberculosis / Q000235:genetics* / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D013045:Species Specificity; D013183:Sputum / Q000382:microbiology; D014376:Tuberculosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D014397:Tuberculosis, Pulmonary / Q000453:epidemiology*
chemical_list: D004269:DNA, Bacterial