Molecular epidemiology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Brazil before the whole genome sequencing era: a literature review

Abstract

Molecular-typing can help in unraveling epidemiological scenarios and improvement for disease control strategies. A literature review of Mycobacterium tuberculosis transmission in Brazil through genotyping on 56 studies published from 1996-2019 was performed. The clustering rate for mycobacterial interspersed repetitive units - variable tandem repeats (MIRU-VNTR) of 1,613 isolates were: 73%, 33% and 28% based on 12, 15 and 24-loci, respectively; while for RFLP-IS 6110 were: 84% among prison population in Rio de Janeiro, 69% among multidrug-resistant isolates in Rio Grande do Sul, and 56.2% in general population in São Paulo. These findings could improve tuberculosis (TB) surveillance and set up a solid basis to build a database of Mycobacterium genomes.

Genomic Diversity of the Rarely Observed Genotype of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis Central Asian (CAS) Lineage 3 from North Brazil

“…Although the State of Pará has the fifth highest number of emerging TB cases in Brazil, molecular characterization of these strains is underutilized in this region. For comparison, MIRU-VNTR and WGS are used more widely in the Southeast, South, and Central West region [ 5 ]. The MDR profile of strain 431 (isolated in 2001) and the susceptible profiles of the other strains isolated after 2001 could imply that there are possibly several missed cases yet to be discovered, described and characterized with a similar SIT profile.…”

“…There is compelling evidence that CAS lineage may have spread across Africa and Eurasia through ancient African-Asian trade networks and the routes of the Silk Road early in the first millennium [1]. Molecular data and identifiers from the CAS strains deposited in SITIVIT2 largely originate from countries along this route: Afghanistan (3), Belgium (1), Bangladesh (8), Brazil (2), China (3), Ethiopia (7), Great Britain (3), India (100), Iran (4), Iraque (24), Italy (1), Jamaica (1), Myanmar (6), Mozambique (1), Malawi (1), Marrocos (2), The Netherlands (1), Nepal (1), Oman (25), Pakistan (38), Saudi-Arabia (38), South Africa (5), Sudan (4), Somalia (9), Tanzania (7), Uganda (3), United States (15), Yemen (2), and Zambia (4). As L3 is underrepresented in this database, important numbers from medium and high-TB-income countries might be missing, since 189 entries are from an unknown origin.…”

“…Northern Brazil has a high incidence of TB, but only a limited number of studies describing the genetic diversity of Mtb has come from this region [ 5 ]. Despite this, L1, rarely observed in South America, was described and genetically characterized in this region and postulated to have been introduced during with the trans-atlantic slave trade events in Brazil from East-African countries such as Mozambique and Malawi [ 6 , 7 , 8 ].…”

Transmission of multidrug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Wuhan, China

“…The MTB isolates were considered to be clustered if they had identical MIRU-VNTR and DTM-PCR genotype. [14] The minimum estimate of the recent infection rate was calculated as follows: (n c -c)/n, where n c represents the clustered isolates, c represents the number of clusters, and n represents all samples of isolates. SPSS 21.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL) was used for statistical analysis.…”