Laboratory tools for tuberculosis control in a setting with a high burden of HIV/AIDS.

Introduction. Nosocomial transmission of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is an important health issue and the detection of tuberculosis (TB) cases is the main tool for controlling this disease.Aim. We aimed to assess the possible occurrence of nosocomial transmission of M. tuberculosis in a reference hospital for HIV/AIDS patients and evaluate both the performance of the Xpert MTB/RIF (Xpert) platform and drug resistance profiles.Methodology. We evaluated the performance of the Xpert platform. Samples that tested positive on the BACTEC MGIT 320 (MGIT320) platform were submitted for genotyping and drug susceptibility testing.Results. In this study, pulmonary and extrapulmonary samples from 407 patients were evaluated, and among these, 15.5 % were diagnosed with TB by the MGIT320 platform, with a TB/HIV coinfection rate of 52.4 %. The Xpert platform gave positive results for TB for 11 samples with negative results on the MGIT320 platform. In the genotyping results, 53.3 % of the strains clustered; of these strains, half were in two of the four clusters formed, and the patients had visited the hospital on the same day. Drug resistance was observed in 11.7 % of the strains.Conclusion. Putative nosocomial transmission of M. tuberculosis was detected, showing that genotyping is a powerful approach for understanding the dynamics of M. tuberculosis transmission, especially in a high-burden TB and HIV landscape.

Clonal expansion across the seas as seen through CPLP-TB database: A joint effort in cataloguing Mycobacterium tuberculosis genetic diversity in Portuguese-speaking countries.

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major health problem within the Community of Portuguese Language Speaking Countries (CPLP). Despite the marked variation in TB incidence across its member-states and continued human migratory flux between countries, a considerable gap in the knowledge on the Mycobacterium tuberculosis population structure and strain circulation between the countries still exists. To address this, we have assembled and analysed the largest CPLP M. tuberculosis molecular and drug susceptibility dataset, comprised by a total of 1447 clinical isolates, including 423 multidrug-resistant isolates, from five CPLP countries. The data herein presented reinforces Latin American and Mediterranean (LAM) strains as the hallmark of M. tuberculosis populational structure in the CPLP coupled with country-specific differential prevalence of minor clades. Moreover, using high-resolution typing by 24-loci MIRU-VNTR, six cross-border genetic clusters were detected, thus supporting recent clonal expansion across the Lusophone space. To make this data available to the scientific community and public health authorities we developed CPLP-TB (available at http://cplp-tb.ff.ulisboa.pt), an online database coupled with web-based tools for exploratory data analysis. As a public health tool, it is expected to contribute to improved knowledge on the M. tuberculosis population structure and strain circulation within the CPLP, thus supporting the risk assessment of strain-specific trends.