The W-Beijing family of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) strains is known for its high-prevalence and -virulence, as well as for its genetic diversity, as recently reported by our laboratories and others. However, little is known about how the immune system responds to these strains. To explore this issue, here we used reverse engineering and genome-wide expression profiling of human macrophage...

Emerging Infectious Diseases • www.cdc.gov/eid • Vol. 20, No. 11, November 2014 1933 to low concentrations of rifampin. To confirm that this effect was a result of persistence rather than generation of resistant mutants, we transferred the colonies growing after transient rifampin exposure of Beijing strain 1585 to a medium containing 8 mg/L rifampin. Their growth was completely inhibited, and ...

BACKGROUND In Vietnam, the Mycobacterium tuberculosis Beijing genotype is associated with multi-drug resistance and is emerging. A possible explanation for this genotype's success is an increased rate of relapse. METHODS In a prospective cohort study, isolates from patients with smear-positive tuberculosis were subjected to drug susceptibility testing and to spoligotyping and variable number ...

Cross-reactive antibody responses of 3 trivalent, live attenuated intranasal influenza vaccine (FluMist) formulations containing 3 different H1N1 strains (A/Texas/36/91, A/Shenzhen/227/95, and A/Beijing/262/95) were evaluated in initially seronegative children. FluMist containing A/Shenzhen/227/95 was more likely to induce cross-reactive hemagglutination inhibition (HAI) antibody against A/Texa...

We conducted a case-control study to investigate risk factors for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) in the People's Republic of China. Genotyping analysis was used to estimate the percentage of cases from recent transmission among 100 MDR TB case-patients hospitalized during April 2007-July 2009. Molecular subtyping of isolates showed that 41% of MDR TB strains clustered. Beijing genoty...

The variable numbers of tandem repeats (VNTR) analysis is a method frequently employed as a molecular epidemiological tool for Mycobacterium tuberculosis genetic fingerprinting. In this study, we characterized the population of M. tuberculosis circulating in Mie Prefecture, Japan, and assessed the utility of the proposed JATA12- and 15-VNTR analyses of 158 M. tuberculosis clinical isolates ...

BACKGROUND Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major health problem in Morocco. Characterization of circulating Mycobacterium tuberculosis genotypic lineages, important to understand the dynamic of the disease, was hereby addressed for the first time at a national level. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Spoligotyping was performed on a panel of 592 M. tuberculosis complex strains covering a 2-year peri...