Strain Typing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Isolates from Korea by Mycobacterial Interspersed Repetitive Units-Variable Number of Tandem Repeats / 대한진단검사의학회지

BACKGROUND: Mycobacterium tuberculosis is one of the most clinically significant infectious agents. Especially during mass outbreaks, accurate identification and monitoring are required. The proportion of Beijing family members is very high among infecting strains, and spoligotyping is not suitable for strain typing. Therefore, we studied the homogeneity of isolates using the mycobacterial interspersed repetitive units-variable number of tandem repeats (MIRU-VNTR) method and identified its utility for carrying out molecular epidemiologic analysis. METHODS: Eighty-one clinical M. tuberculosis isolates that had previously been analyzed by spoligotyping were used in this study. We used the 12 standard MIRU loci and further four exact tandem repeat (ETR) loci (ETR-A, -B, -C, and -F). Four strains each of randomly selected Beijing and Beijing-like families were subjected to IS6110- restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis. RESULTS: All 81 samples showed amplification products of all VNTR loci, and all of them showed differences in at least one locus. The calculation of the Hunter-Gaston diversity index (HGDI) for MIRU-VNTR gave the value of 0.965. Discriminatory index in the six loci (MIRU-10, -16, -26, -31, -39, and ETR-F) were found to be highly discriminated (HGDI >0.6). Beijing and Beijing-like family isolates were discriminated into different MIRU-VNTR types. CONCLUSIONS: MIRU-VNTR analysis by using well-selected loci can be useful in discriminating the clinical M. tuberculosis isolates in areas where the Beijing family is predominant.

Determinants of 1-Year Changes of Brachial Ankle Pulse Wave Velocity (baPWV) in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus / 당뇨병

BACKGROUND: Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of mortality in type 2 diabetes. PWV correlates well with arterial distensibility and stiffness and a useful approach for evaluating the severity of systemic atherosclerosis in adults, and, in particular, the measurement of brachial-ankle PWV (baPWV) has been commonly reported as a simple, noninvasive and practicable method. baPWV was mainly affected by age, SBP and sex. And also, baPWV was affected by many different factors such as body weight, BMI, waist to hip ratio, HbA1c, microalbuminuria, triglyceride, gammaGTP, duration of DM. We evaluated determinants of 1-year changes of baPWV in patients with type 2 DM. METHODS: The study group comprised 189 diabetic patients who measured ankle brachial pressure index (ABI), baPWV at base line and 1-year later. The anthropometric parameters, blood pressure, pulse pressure, fasting plasma glucose (FBS), fasting insulin, A1c, lipid profile, hsCRP, microalbuminuria, AST/ALT, gammaGTP were also checked concurrently. We also analyzed correlation between change of baPWV and subject's medications. We retrospectively analyzed the relationship between the 1-year changes of baPWV and the other factors. All analyses were performed with the SPSS Version 14.0 and P values < 0.05 were considered significant. RESULTS: baPWV change was affected by systolic blood pressure change, diastolic blood pressure change, pulse pressure change, body weight, BMI, triglyceride change, insulin treatment and total cholesterol. Multiple regression analysis of the relationship between change of baPWV and other associated variables shows that the 1-year change of baPWV was significantly associated with the changes of blood pressure and insulin treatment in patients with type 2 DM. CONCLUSION: 1-year change of baPWV was significantly associated with the changes of blood pressure in patients with type 2 DM.