Molecular epidemiology of mycobacterium tuberculosis transmission in niigata, Japan

摘要

Tuberculosis remains a major public health problem in both developing and develoepd countries. In Japan, 42,000 people are infected ith M. tuberculosis, and some 2,700 of these people died in 1997. Faced with serious problems such as the growing incidence of group infections in school, medical facilities, and facilities for the elderly, the Ministry of Health and Welfare of Japan also declared a state of emergency concerning tuberculosis in 1999. It is epidemiologically crucial for tuberculosis control to identify the source and the rout of infection on a molecular level. M. tuberculosis strains carry up to about 20 copies of the insertion sequence called IS6110 (1,355 base pairs, bp, in length) on the chromosome. Based on differences in the location and copy number of IS6110, each M. tuberculosis strain can usually be identified by DNA hybridization. In the present study, we investigated a case of intrafamilial transmission of M. tuberculosis in Niigata by the IS6110-based hybridization assay.