RESUMEN
This study was done to characterize at the species level Mycobacterium spp. isolates from Yemeni pulmonary tuberculosis patients. Early-morning sputum samples were collected from 170 patients referred to the National Tuberculosis Institute in Sana'a city with suspected pulmonary tuberculosis. Samples were processed with Ziehl-Neelsen stain and cultured in Ogawa and Lowenstein-Jensen media. The rpoB gene target sequence was amplified using mutagenesis forward and reverse primers followed by Hindlll enzyme digestion. Of the 120 isolates analysed, 118 [98.3%] were identified as M. tuberculosis complex and 2 [1.7%] were identified as mycobacteria other than M. tuberculosis. The results showed that those 2 isolates were multi-drug resistant and the DMA sequencing analysis showed that the alignment of nucleic acid of DNAin isolates of mycobacteria other than M. tuberculosis was different from that of M tuberculosis complex