At Baltic crossroads: a molecular snapshot ofMycobacterium tuberculosispopulation diversity in Kaliningrad, Russia

Abstract

The Kaliningrad region is the westernmost part of the Russian Federation; it includes an enclave on the Baltic Sea inside the European Union separated from mainland Russia by Lithuania and Poland. The incidence of tuberculosis in Kaliningrad has shown a steady and dramatic increase from 83/100,000 in 2000 to 134/100,000 in 2006; the rate of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-tuberculosis) in the Kaliningrad region was reported to be 30.5% among newly diagnosed tuberculosis patients. This study presents a first molecular snapshot of the population diversity of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in this region. A total of 90 drug-resistant and susceptible M. tuberculosis strains from Kaliningrad were subjected to spoligotyping, 12-locus MIRU typing and mutation analysis of the drug resistance genes rpoB and katG. A comparison with international databases showed that the M. tuberculosis population in this region shares a joint pool of strains with the European part of Russia, and also exhibits a certain affinity with those of its northern European neighbours, such as Poland and Germany. Comparison of the genotyping and drug resistance data emphasized that the high prevalence of the MDR Beijing genotype strains is a major cause of the adverse epidemiological situation of MDR-tuberculosis in the Kaliningrad region.

Genetic Diversity of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Isolates from a Tertiary Care Tuberculosis Hospital in South Korea

“…This could be explained partly by the fact that these isolates were obtained from hospitalized subjects in a referral setting, compared to the more general population-based samples used in other studies (30). The high proportion of isolates belonging to the Beijing family reported herein coupled with the fact that at least 39% of the samples analyzed were either MDR (30.3%) or XDR (9.6%) confirms previous reports suggesting an association between the Beijing family and drug resistance (11,25). These findings suggest that our study subjects could have been selectively infected with M. tuberculosis strains that are more prone to the establishment of chronic infections and are more difficult to treat.…”

Detection of Resistance to Second-Line Antituberculosis Drugs by Use of the Genotype MTBDR sl Assay: a Multicenter Evaluation and Feasibility Study

“…Converging drug-resistant TB and HIV epidemics pose a serious problem and undermine the efforts of national TB control programs (5). There is growing evidence that drug resistance in these settings is strongly associated with the dominating Beijing family of strains (6,10,14,15,17,21,22).…”

Molecular Epidemiology of Tuberculosis in the Kaliningrad Region of Russia: 10 Years After

“…2), что существенно выше анало-гичных показателей 2006 г. -13,0% (P = 0,0018; OR = 6,19 [1,,41]) и 2,2% (P = 0,0124; OR = 15,75 [1,,64]) [17].…”

“…Следует отметить, что за прошедшее деся-тилетие в Калининградской области доля МЛУ штаммов генотипа Beijing существенно не из-менилась: в 2006 г. -61,3% [17], в 2015 г. -56,5% (P = 0,6773; OR = 0,82 [0,32-2,08]) (табл.…”

“…В частности, наше преды-дущее исследование популяции M. tuberculosis в Калининградской области в 2006 г. определи-ло основные циркулирующие генотипы возбу-дителя и установило ассоциацию штаммов ге-нетического семейства Beijing с МЛУ [17].…”