Impact of bacterial genetics on the transmission of isoniazid-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Understanding the ecology of drug-resistant pathogens is essential for devising rational programs to preserve the effective lifespan of antimicrobial agents and to abrogate epidemics of drug-resistant organisms. Mathematical models predict that strain fitness is an important determinant of multidrug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis transmission, but the effects of strain diversity have been largely overlooked. Here we compared the impact of resistance mutations on the transmission of isoniazid-resistant M.