MIRU-VNTR GENOTYPING OF <i>MYCOBACTERIUM TUBERCULOSIS</i> CLINICAL ISOLATES FROM MOSCOW REGION
Antibiotic selection pressure, genetic polymorphism as well as diversity of the immune status of the host and other selection factors continuously prompt Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the tuberculosis causative agent, to evolve. Significant or insignificant mutations shape new (sub)lineages of the pathogen whose evolution can be understood only through analyzing and monitoring its genotypic diversity and properties of its lineages. In our study we used a set of 46 M. tuberculosis clinical isolates from Moscow region. The samples were typed using the standard 24-loci MIRU-VNTR technique. Beijing family isolates were shown to prevail in the collection (60.9 %), as well as Beijing-B0A/V148 subtype (60.7 % of total Beijing type samples); most of them (88,2 %) were multidrug-resistant resistant. The applied technique allowed us to detect one case of a mixed-strain infection.