Abstract
This study aimed to characterize the population structure of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Pskov oblast in northwestern Russia, to view it in the geographical context, to compare drug resistance properties across major genetic families. Ninety M. tuberculosis strains from tuberculosis (TB) patients, permanent residents in Pskov oblast were subjected to LAM-specific IS6110-PCR and spoligotyping, followed by comparison with SITVITWEB and MIRU-VNTRplus databases. The Beijing genotype (n = 40) was found the most prevalent followed by LAM (n = 18), T (n = 13), Haarlem (n = 10), Ural (n = 5), and Manu2 (n = 1); the family status remained unknown for 3 isolates. The high rate of Beijing genotype and prevalence of LAM family are similar to those in the other Russian settings. A feature specific for M. tuberculosis population in Pskov is a relatively higher rate of Haarlem and T types. Beijing strains were further typed with 12-MIRU (followed by comparison with proprietary global database) and 3 hypervariable loci QUB-3232, VNTR-3820, VNTR-4120. The 12-MIRU typing differentiated 40 Beijing strains into 14 types (HGI = 0.82) while two largest types were M2 (223325153533) prevalent throughout former USSR and M11 (223325173533) prevalent in Russia and East Asia. The use of 3 hypervariable loci increased a discrimination of the Beijing strains (18 profiles, HGI = 0.89). Both major families Beijing and LAM had similar rate of MDR strains (62.5 and 55.6%, respectively) that was significantly higher than in other strains (21.9%; P = 0.001 and 0.03, respectively). The rpoB531 mutations were more frequently found in Beijing strains while LAM drug resistant strains mainly harbored rpoB516 and inhA −15 mutations. Taken together with a high rate of multidrug resistance among Beijing strains from new TB cases (79.3% versus 44.4% in LAM), these findings suggest the critical impact of the Beijing genotype on the current situation with MDR-TB in the Pskov region in northwestern Russia.
Highlights
The permanent development of the novel and fine-tuning of the existing molecular approaches permitted a spatio-temporal surveillance of the circulating clones of Mycobacterium tuberculosis at global and within-country levels
Association of certain genetic variants of M. tuberculosis in Russia with pathogenic properties has been demonstrated in some settings, especially for the Beijing genotype strains other predominant genotypes deserve no less attention as well
Information gained by IS6110-RFLP, 12-MIRU-VNTR and spoligotyping is available in many settings within Russia and in the neighboring countries
Summary
The permanent development of the novel and fine-tuning of the existing molecular approaches permitted a spatio-temporal surveillance of the circulating clones of Mycobacterium tuberculosis at global and within-country levels. Association of certain genetic variants of M. tuberculosis in Russia with pathogenic properties has been demonstrated in some settings, especially for the Beijing genotype strains other predominant genotypes deserve no less attention as well. The population of M. tuberculosis strains circulating in Russia has been well characterized by different typing methods, the use of different methodologies across different studies makes it difficult to draw comparable conclusions. Information gained by IS6110-RFLP, 12-MIRU-VNTR and spoligotyping is available in many settings within Russia and in the neighboring countries. Petersburg [1,2], Karelia [3], Archangel [4], Murmansk [5] while other provinces received no attention at all or much smaller attention due to inherent limitation of the small sampling per location (e.g., [6])
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