Bias in detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis polyclonal infection: Use clinical samples or cultures?

The application of MIRU-VNTR has unveiled that infection by Mycobacterium tuberculosis can be polyclonal. Our comparative study demonstrated that based on the studied samples (clinical specimen or culture) detection of polyclonal M. tuberculosis infection can be significantly different.

Evaluation of the impact of polyclonal infection and heteroresistance on treatment of tuberculosis patients.

Mixed strain infections of Mycobacterium tuberculosis make diagnosis, treatment, and control of tuberculosis (TB) more difficult. This study was aimed to evaluate the relationship between mixed infections, antibiotic resistance patterns and treatment of TB patients. In this study, among 2850 suspected TB clinical samples, a total of ninety-six clinical samples from 66 TB confirmed patients were subjected to the 24-locus variable-number tandem repeat method to evaluate the prevalence of mixed infections.