USE OF 15 MIRU-VNTR GENOTYPING FOR DISCRIMINATING M. TUBERCULOSIS CLINICAL ISOLATES FROM KAZAKHSTAN.

Tuberculosis is one of the main problems of medicine in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is on the list of 30 countries with high rates of multidrug resistant tuberculosis in the world. Aim of this study is to conduct genotyping by MIRU-VNTR method to get preliminary data on M. tuberculosis genotypes distributed among the clinical isolates in Kazakhstan. 271 M. tuberculosis clinical isolates were gathered from new cases of tuberculosis from different regions of Kazakhstan in this study. Genotyping was done using 15 MIRU-VNTR (12 MIRU+3 ETR) loci. Obtained digital profiles of the clinical isolates were analyzed using the database on miru-vntrplus.org. Phylogenetic tree was built by UPGMA method. 97 genotypes were identified, 70 (25.8%) of them were unique and were determined in one isolate in the sample collection. The rest 201 (74.2%) isolates were grouped into 27 clusters, that contained from 2 to 102 isolates. According to genotyping results M. tuberculosis Beijing family strains were found in 65.3% cases. 121 out of 177 Beijing isolates (68.4%) were drug-resistant. Prevalence of MDR-TB was detected among drug-resistant Beijing (58.7% - 71/121) and LAM family (50% - 10/20) isolates.