“…Provided that the PFGE method and interpretation are carefully standardized for a given microorganism, this method has robust reliability and intra-and inter-laboratory reproducibility (Goering, 2010). Similar DNA fragment-based methods have also been developed and used for clinical analyses including; restriction endonuclease fingerprinting analysis (REA) (Falk et al, 1985), plasmid typing (Farrar, 1983;Mayer, 1988;Nicolle et al, 1992), ribotyping (Thomson-Carter et al, 1989), PCR fingerprinting (Welsh and McClelland, 1990), restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) (Goh et al, 1992;Metzgar et al, 1998), and amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) (Vos et al, 1995;Meudt and Clarke, 2007). Multi-locus variable number tandem repeat analysis (MLVA) is another PCR-based method, which is used to determine the number and length of variable number tandem repeats (VNTRs) present in a genome due to slipped mispairing .…”