Spoligotyping of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates from Pulmonary Tuberculosis patients from North Karnataka, India

Tuberculosis (TB) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in low income countries. Multi-drug resistant (MDR-TB) is seen as the reason for many TB outbreaks globally and is also a threat to control programmes. India accounts for 27% TB cases worldwide. Our study was undertaken to understand the outbreaks related to MTB. All the sputum samples were subjected to microscopy and smear positive samples were cultured on Lowenstein-Jensen (L-J) media. Identification was carried by biochemical analysis. A total of 57 isolates were subjected to Drug Susceptibility testing (DST) and spoligotyping, where eleven MDR-TB isolates were confirmed, of which ten were SIT1/Beijing and one SIT53/T1. Spoligotyping results showed that the predominant lineage in this region was SIT1/Beijing followed by SIT124/U and the strains which did not match spoligodatabase were named as orphans. In this study, MDR-TB was associated with SIT1/Beijing and mono resistance belonged to CAS1_DEL.