As. De Boer et al., Analysis of rate of change of IS6110 RFLP patterns of Mycobacterium tuberculosis based on serial patient isolates, J INFEC DIS, 180(4), 1999, pp. 1238-1244
The rate of change of IS6110 restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP
) patterns of Mycobacterium tuberculosis was determined in serial isolates
from 544 patients. In 25 patients (4.6%), the RFLP patterns of the follow-u
p isolates differed from the initial isolates. Patients with different foll
ow-up strains were less likely to cluster with patients whose strains had i
ndistinguishable RFLP patterns. Changes in RFLP patterns were more common f
or persons with extrapulmonary disease and for those who had both pulmonary
and extrapulmonary isolates. Based on serial isolates spanning for the mos
t part <3 months, the half-life was extrapolated to be 3.2 years (95% confi
dence interval, 2.1-5.0). The main implication of this study is that the ra
te of change of IS6110-based RFLP of M. tuberculosis supports the use of IS
6110 typing in epidemiologic studies of recent transmission of tuberculosis
.