Members of the MTBC are the causative agents of tuberculosis (TB). leprae, collectively referred to as nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM). leprae, and mycobacteria other than the MTBC and M. They all fall into three major groups, that is, the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC), M. According to the most recent version of the List of Prokaryotic Names with Standing in Nomenclature (LPSN) database ( ), the genus Mycobacterium now accommodates a total of 169 distinct species. The first known representative of this group was discovered, under the name of Bacillus leprae, by Hansen in 1875 ( 2), and the first scientific taxonomy of mycobacteria began in 1896, when the genus Mycobacterium was originally erected by Lehmann and Neumann. Mycobacteria are speculated to have existed as early as 150 million years ago, in the Jurassic period ( 1), and today they are ubiquitous, occurring in every habitat and ecosystem of the world, perhaps except for the polar regions. The relevance of these methods to the epidemiological investigation, diagnosis, evolution, and control of mycobacterial diseases is discussed. In this review, molecular typing methods for Mycobacterium tuberculosis and nontuberculous mycobacteria elaborated over the last 2 decades are summarized. Since genotyping continues to unravel the biology of mycobacteria, it offers enormous promise in the fight against and prevention of the diseases caused by these pathogens. Among these issues are disclosing sources of infection, quantifying recent transmission, identifying transmission links, discerning reinfection from relapse, tracking the geographic distribution and clonal expansion of specific strains, and exploring the genetic mechanisms underlying specific phenotypic traits, including virulence, organ tropism, transmissibility, or drug resistance.
It serves as a resource for understanding the key issues in the epidemiology of tuberculosis and other mycobacterial diseases. So-called molecular epidemiology has become an essential subdiscipline of modern mycobacteriology. Since the mid-1990s, when the first typing methods were introduced, a plethora of other modalities have been proposed. With the advent of fingerprinting techniques, many traditional concepts regarding transmission, infectivity, or pathogenicity of mycobacterial bacilli have been revisited, and their conventional interpretations have been challenged. Molecular typing has revolutionized epidemiological studies of infectious diseases, including those of a mycobacterial etiology.
0 kommentar(er)
