EVALUATION OF SPOLIGOTYPING IN A STUDY OF THE TRANSMISSION OF MYCOBACTERIUM-TUBERCULOSIS

Spoligotyping (fur spacer oligotyping) is an easy economical, and rapi d way of typing Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex strains with tile D R spacer markers (J. Kamerbeek et al., J. Clin. Microbiol. 35:907-914, 1997; D, van Soolingen et al., 33:3234-3248, 1995), The stability of the markers was demonstrated hy showing that ail the Mycobacterium bov is BCG strains tested gave the same spoligotyping pattern, None of the 4Z atypical mycobacterial strains tested gave a spoligotyping signal, indicating the specificity of the technique for M, tuberculosis compl ex. The utility of the spoligotyping method was demonstrated be analyz ing BOG isolates uf M. tuberculosis obtained over 1 year in three Pari s hospitals. The results obtained by this; technique were compared to those obtained by Torrea ct al, (G. Torrea et al., J, Clin, Microbiol. 34:1043-1049), 1996) by IS6110-based restriction fragment length poly morphism (RFLP) analysis, Strains from patients with epidemiological r elationships that were in the same IS6110-RFLP cluster were also in th e same spoligotyping group, Spoligotyping was more discriminative than RFLP analysis for strains Kith one or two copies of IS6110, RFLP anal ysis did not discriminate between the nine strains with one or two IS6 110 bands with no known epidemiological relation, whereas spoligotypin g distinguished between eight different types, IS6110-RFLP analysis sp lit some of the spoligotyping clusters, particularly when the IS6110 c opy number was high, Therefore, we propose a strategy for typing M. tu berculosis strains in which both markers are user).