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Maria Jordao (INSA, Lisbon, Portugal)
Tuberculosis is an old disease affecting the human population. After being almost eradicated with the introduction of antibiotics such as streptomycin it raised again, in the 1980s, together with the AIDS pandemic. At the moment it is considered a health emergency by the WHO being the main opportunistic infection amongst HIV infected individuals. To make even worst this situation the emergence of antibiotic resistance strains of mycobacteria made this old disease one of the biggest challenges faced by medicine. The introduction of molecular methods has gained increased acceptance as a tool for epidemiology and phylogeny of tuberculosis. Amongst these a PCR based method, Mycobacteria Interspersed Repetitive Units- Variable Number Tandem Repeats (MIRU-VNTR), has gained particular relevance since it allows high throughput discriminatory and reproducible analysis of clinical isolates providing a quick answer during outbreaks. This experimental approach has advantages over other classical methods as IS6110-RFLP being currently used, mostly combined with spoligotyping, in the characterization of mycobacteria molecular clusters. In the present study we try to establish a link between myco