Tuberculosis (TB) is recognized as a major public health problem in nearly all parts of the world. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), among 8.7 million incident case of TB in year 2011, 7.7% occurred in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. However, bordering with high-TB burden countries (Afghanistan and Pakistan) and increasing rates of drug resistance TB, threaten the control strategies. Since the discovery of polymorphic DNA, molecular typing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) strains has become a valuable tool for control of disease. Until now, several genotyping methods for MTB strains exist, of which IS6110-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP), spoligotyping and variable number tandem repeat (VNTR) were among the most commonly used. Recently, MTB strains were identified by a number of insertion or deletion events in specific genomic regions known as regions of differences (RDs). Among these RDs, deletions in RD1, RD150 and RD181 were mostly associated with drug resistant strains i.e. Beijing linage strains. Previously, the association between these set of RDs deletions and a family of MTB strains have been reported by several studies.
Last date updated on July, 2014
