ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: In spite of appropriate therapy and control for tuberculosis, the prevalence of tuberculosis is still frequent in Korea. Emerging infection and rapid detection of multidrug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MDR-TB) are major interests in microbiologic laboratories. In this study, we evaluated the usefulness of random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) genotyping for molecular epidemiological characteristics of MDR-TB. METHODS: We analyzed 64 clinical strains of M. tuberculosis including 35 strains which showed resistance to one or more antimycobacterial drugs and M. tuberculosis H37Rv (ATCC 27294), as a drug-sensitive control strain. RAPD genotyping analysis was carried out under eight reaction conditions and using ten random primers (A-1245, AP-50, B-1245, DKU-44, DKU-49, Leg-1, INS-2, IS-986-FP, PF-15 and MBR). RESULTS: RAPD patterns using six primers (IS-986-FP, DKU-44, DKU-49, INS-2, B-1245, and AP-50) showed marked polymorphisms that were easier to discriminate than those with other primers. RAPD patterns represented various polymorphisms among 64 strains. However, RAPD could not discriminate MDR-TB strains from drug-sensitive ones. CONCLUSIONS: RAPD genotyping is assumed a preferable technique for discrimination among clinical strains of M. tuberculosis but not for specifying MDR-TB strains.