Editorial
Typing of mycobacteria using spoligotyping
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
The potential use of spoligotyping
a polymerase
chain reaction based typing system for differentiation of
strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosisfor studying the
epidemiology of tuberculosis in developing countries which do not
routinely perform mycobacterial culture is described in this issue of
Thorax by Heyderman et al in a study from
Zimbabwe.1 How does this newer method compare with the now
more established molecular typing methods for tuberculosis?
The most commonly used typing system for tuberculosis is IS6110
based restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP).2 Extensive experience with IS6110 based RFLP typing has shown that there
is a high degree of heterogeneity in typing patterns. This means that
the technique is highly discriminatory so that it is unlikely that two
organisms will share indistinguishable typing patterns by
chance.3-6 This property has allowed RFLP typing to be
used in a variety of ways. For example, typing can be used to confirm
outbreaks of
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Scott, A. N., Menzies, D., Tannenbaum, T.-N., Thibert, L., Kozak, R., Joseph, L., Schwartzman, K., Behr, M. A.
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