Spoligotyping followed by double-repetitive-element PCR as rapid alternative to IS6110 fingerprinting for epidemiological studies of tuberculosis.

C. Sola (1) , L. Horgen (1) , J. Maïsetti (1) , A. Devallois (1) , K. S. Goh (1) , N. Rastogi (1)

1 Institut Pasteur de la Guadeloupe

A total of 129 clinical isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis representing 91 patients were typed by a combination of direct-repeat (DR)-based spoligotyping and an inter-IS6110-PGRS (polymorphic GC-rich region)-PCR, also designated double-repetitive-element PCR (DRE-PCR). During the first phase of this investigation, 72 clinical strains representing 52 patients were initially typed by IS6110-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) and DR-RFLP, followed by spoligotyping and DRE-PCR. In the second phase of this investigation, the discriminating ability of spoligotyping plus DRE-PCR was studied for 57 isolates from 39 patients who were suspected to be epidemiologically linked, and the typing results were later confirmed by IS6110-RFLP and DR-RFLP analyses. The molecular clustering of the isolates remained identical irrespective of the methods used. These results show that the association of two PCR-based fingerprinting techniques for molecular epidemiology of tuberculosis has a discriminating ability similar to the IS6110-RFLP reference method.

Domains: Life Sciences [q-bio]; Microbiology and Parasitology; Bacteriology

C. Sola, L. Horgen, J. Maïsetti, A. Devallois, K. S. Goh, et al.. Spoligotyping followed by double-repetitive-element PCR as rapid alternative to IS6110 fingerprinting for epidemiological studies of tuberculosis.. Journal of Clinical Microbiology, 1998, 36 (4), pp.1122-4. ⟨pasteur-00931154⟩