The Epidemiological Significance and Temporal Stability of Mycobacterial Interspersed Repetitive Units-Variable Number of Tandem Repeats-Based Method Applied to Mycobacterium tuberculosis in China

Yang Li, Yi Hu, Mikael Mansjö, Qi Zhao, Weili Jiang, Solomon Ghebremichael, Sven Hoffner and Biao Xu
Additional contact information
Yang Li: Department of Epidemiology, China and Key Laboratory of Public Health Safety (Fudan University), School of Public Health, Fudan University, Ministry of Education, Shanghai 200032, China
Yi Hu: Department of Epidemiology, China and Key Laboratory of Public Health Safety (Fudan University), School of Public Health, Fudan University, Ministry of Education, Shanghai 200032, China
Mikael Mansjö: The Public Health Agency of Sweden, SE-171 82 Solna, Sweden
Qi Zhao: Department of Epidemiology, China and Key Laboratory of Public Health Safety (Fudan University), School of Public Health, Fudan University, Ministry of Education, Shanghai 200032, China
Weili Jiang: Department of Epidemiology, China and Key Laboratory of Public Health Safety (Fudan University), School of Public Health, Fudan University, Ministry of Education, Shanghai 200032, China
Solomon Ghebremichael: The Public Health Agency of Sweden, SE-171 82 Solna, Sweden
Sven Hoffner: Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institutet, SE-171 77 Stockholm, Sweden
Biao Xu: Department of Epidemiology, China and Key Laboratory of Public Health Safety (Fudan University), School of Public Health, Fudan University, Ministry of Education, Shanghai 200032, China

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 4, 1-11

Abstract: This study aimed to validate the epidemiological significance and temporal stability of Mycobacterial Interspersed Repetitive Units-Variable Number of Tandem Repeats (MIRU-VNTR) typing in a genetically and geographically diverse set of clinical isolates from patients diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis in China. Between 2010 and 2013, a total of 982 Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates were collected from four population-based investigations in China. Apart from the currently applied 24-locus MIRU-VNTR, six additional hypervariable loci were analyzed in order to validate the MIRU-VNTR combinations in terms of their epidemiological links, clustering time span, and paired geographic distance. In vitro temporal stability was analyzed for both individual MIRU-VNTR loci, and for several combinations of loci. In the present study, four MIRU-VNTR combinations, including the hypervariable loci 3820, 3232, 2163a, and 4120, were evaluated. All of these combinations obtained a Hunter-Gaston discriminatory index (HGDI) value over 0.9900 with a reduced clustering proportion (from 32.0% to 25.6%). By comparing epidemiological links, clustering time span, and paired geographic distance, we found that the performances of the four MIRU-VNTR combinations were comparable to the insertion sequence 6110 restriction fragment length polymorphism (IS 6110 -RFLP), and significantly better than that of 24-locus MIRU-VNTR genotyping alone. The proportion of temporally stable loci ranged from 90.5% to 92.5% within the combined MIRU-VNTR genotyping, which is higher than IS 6110 -RFLP (85.4%). By adding four hypervariable loci to the standard 24-locus MIRU-VNTR genotyping, we obtained a high discriminatory power, stability and epidemiological significance. This algorithm could therefore be used to improve tuberculosis transmission surveillance and outbreak investigation in China.

Keywords: Mycobacterium tuberculosis; MIRU-VNTR; epidemiological significance; temporal stability; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/4/782/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/4/782/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:4:p:782-:d:141670

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().