Usefulness of Variable Numbers of Tandem Repeats Method as a Molecular Epidemiological Tool for Outbreak of Tuberculosis

Abstract

Restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) method is now widely used as an epidemiological tool for outbreak of tuberculosis. But it needs at least one microgram of bacterial DNA for analysis, and it takes over one month for bacterial culture to get enough DNA, so it is hard to get quick results. We have been reporting arbitrarily primed PCR (AP-PCR) method, variable numbers of tandem repeats (VNTR) method, which are based on PCR method, to get rapid results for typing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Here we report about VNTR method, which is suitable for construction of genome database of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and is a technically easy method, is compared to RFLP method about analyzing power. We examined discrimination power of each tandem repeat region using Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains isolated from outbreak cases of tuberculosis.