title: Strain typing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates from Korea by mycobacterial interspersed repetitive units-variable number of tandem repeats.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Mycobacterium tuberculosis is one of the most clinically significant infectious agents. Especially during mass outbreaks, accurate identification and monitoring are required. The proportion of Beijing family members is very high among infecting strains, and spoligotyping is not suitable for strain typing. Therefore, we studied the homogeneity of isolates using the mycobacterial interspersed repetitive units-variable number of tandem repeats (MIRU-VNTR) method and identified its utility for carrying out molecular epidemiologic analysis.
  
  
  METHODS
  Eighty-one clinical M. tuberculosis isolates that had previously been analyzed by spoligotyping were used in this study. We used the 12 standard MIRU loci and further four exact tandem repeat (ETR) loci (ETR-A, -B, -C, and -F). Four strains each of randomly selected Beijing and Beijing-like families were subjected to IS6110- restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis.
  
  
  RESULTS
  All 81 samples showed amplification products of all VNTR loci, and all of them showed differences in at least one locus. The calculation of the Hunter-Gaston diversity index (HGDI) for MIRU-VNTR gave the value of 0.965. Discriminatory index in the six loci (MIRU-10, -16, -26, -31, -39, and ETR-F) were found to be highly discriminated (HGDI >0.6). Beijing and Beijing-like family isolates were discriminated into different MIRU-VNTR types.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  MIRU-VNTR analysis by using well-selected loci can be useful in discriminating the clinical M. tuberculosis isolates in areas where the Beijing family is predominant.
authors.affiliation: Department of Internal Medicine, Busan St. Mary's Hospital, Busan, Korea.
authors.forename: Kyung Won
authors.initials: KW
authors.lastname: Yun
authors.forename: Eun Ju
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Song
authors.forename: Go Eun
authors.initials: GE
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.forename: In Kyung
authors.initials: IK
authors.lastname: Hwang
authors.forename: Eun Yup
authors.initials: EY
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Chulhun L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Chang
mesh_terms: D015373:Bacterial Typing Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000032:analysis; D005838:Genotype; D006801:Humans; D018598:Minisatellite Repeats; D009169:Mycobacterium tuberculosis / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D056910:Republic of Korea; D014376:Tuberculosis / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000382:microbiology*
chemical_list: D004269:DNA, Bacterial