It is difficult to distinguish between clinically significant slowly-growing, non-pigmented mycobacteria, notably to separate M. aviumand M. intracellulare from one another and from M. scrofulaceum strains. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the extent to which 16S rRNA sequencing could be used to highlight the taxonomic relationships of the mycobacterial strains, which are difficult to ...

A medium for the selective isolation and enumeration of Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare and M. scrofulaceum (MAIS) was developed, based upon the ability of these mycobacteria to utilize Tween 80 as sole carbon source and grow optimally at pH 5.5 on a simple mineral salts medium. Representative MAIS strains had higher efficiencies of plating on the Tween 80 medium compared with Middlebrook 7H...

Since the incidence of tuberculosis is steadily declining in Finland and infections by environmental mycobacteria may be increasing, the aim of the present study was to evaluate the development of tuberculin reactivity and sensitization to environmental mycobacteria. Healthy Finnish schoolchildren aged 10.4-12.4 yrs (n=201) were tested with tuberculin purified protein derivative RT23, Mycobacte...

International travel may be a source of introduction of tuberculosis into low-incidence countries. We assessed whether, in The Netherlands, sensitivity to tuberculin was associated with a history of travel to countries with a high incidence of tuberculosis. Immunocompetent adults with no history of Bacille Calmette-Guérin vaccination or sensitivity to tuberculin were skin-tested simultaneously ...

We recently reported a genus-specific PCR for the mycobacterial dnaJ gene. In the present study, we have determined the nucleotide sequences of the dnaJ gene from 19 mycobacterial species (Mycobacterium tuberculosis, M. bovis, M. bovis BCG, M. africanum, M. microti, M. marinum, M. kansasii, M. gastri, M. simiae, M. scrofulaceum, M. szulgai, M. gordonae, M. avium, M. intracellulare, M. xenopi, M...