Mycobacterium tuberculosis genotype Beijing: About 15 strains and their part in MDR-TB outbreaks in Algeria

Abstract Within the framework of epidemiological surveillance by molecular typing tools conducted in the NRL on multi-resistant strains, the application of spoligotyping on a group of 390 strains consisting of 389 DR-MTB strains and 1 susceptible strain isolated from patients made it possible to detect the presence of 15 strains belonging to the Beijing genotype. All 15 strains were genotyped by MTBDR plus . Among the 15 strains, 11 were typed by RFLP and 9 by MIRU-VNTR. After analysis of the profiles obtained by the software MIRU-VNTRplus, two spoligotypes (st No. 1 and st No. 265) and four RFLP profiles and a complete identity profile by MIRU-VNTR, information collected on patients allowed the research team to detect a family tie among patients of three different families, as well as one nosocomial TB transmission. The percentage of Beijing strains found among the patients in this study was 3.8%; this figure does not reflect the reality because it was calculated from an essay on MDR-TB. To get an idea of the prevalence of Beijing TB strains in this country, a more extensive study is currently being considered.