Métodos aplicados à epidemiologia molecular do mycobacterium tuberculosis

Abstract

Almost one third of the world population is infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis which results in two millions of deaths annually. Every year, eight million of new tuberculosis cases are reported worldwide and Brazil is one of the main contributing countries for those cases. Key factors for controlling tuberculosis are: rapid detection, adequate therapy, and means to avoid further transmissions. Strain characterization by molecular typing has become a useful tool in epidemiological investigations. There are several methods for molecular typing of these strains, IS6110-RFLP being considered the gold standard. Some methods, such as spoligotyping, VNTRs-MIRUSs, among others, have proved to be useful as an alternative in cases where IS6110-RFLP is not applicable. In order to broaden our understanding about Mycobacterium sp genotyping techniques, as well as their limitations and advantages, several relevant publications about this matter are presented and discussed in this review.