[Proposal of a five MIRU-VNTR panel to screen clinical isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Mexico]

Abstract

Introduction: Tuberculosis is a public health problem across Mexico. This paper aims to select a panel, with a minimum number of repetitive elements (MIRU-VNTR) for genotypic characterization of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) clinical isolates.

Method: In this study, a full panel of 24 MIRU-VNTR loci was used to discriminate 65 clinical isolates of M. tuberculosis from three different geographical regions of Mexico. Those loci with the highest discriminatory power were subsequently selected.

Results: The panel, including five loci, was obtained by selecting the highest values of allelic diversity among the genotypes obtained. The dendrogram, generated by the panel MIRU-VNTR 5, showed a high discriminatory power with 65 unique genotype profiles and formed clusters according to the geographical region of origin.

Conclusions: The panel MIRU-VNTR 5 can be useful for characterizing clinical isolates of M. tuberculosis in Mexico.

Keywords: MIRU-VNTR; Mexico; Mycobacterium tuberculosis; México.