Current trends in molecular epidemiology studies of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Abstract

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is one of the most harmful human pathogens worldwide, and there are mass efforts for controlling this pathogen. One of the powerful tools to find out and control this pathogen is molecular epidemiology techniques. Currently, wide ranges of techniques are available to type mycobacterium tuberculosis, and choosing the correct technique as a portable and standard method is difficult. IS6110 restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) remains gold standard method on genotyping to date, but it is labor intensive and inefficient on samples which have fewer than six copy numbers of IS6110. In the recent years, some new methods have been introduced for genotyping of mycobacterium tuberculosis such as mycobacterial interspersed repetitive unit-variable number tandem repeat (MIRU-VNTR) and Spoligotyping. The present review tries to introduce new approaches in molecular techniques for epidemiological investigation of tuberculosis and to illustrate advantages and problems associated with them. Key words: Molecular epidemiology, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, fingerprinting, transmission, genotype.