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. 2011 Oct;60(Pt 10):1441-1446.
doi: 10.1099/jmm.0.029389-0. Epub 2011 May 19.

Genotyping of Mycobacterium leprae from Brazilian leprosy patients suggests the occurrence of reinfection or of bacterial population shift during disease relapse

Adalgiza da Silva Rocha  1 , Alexandre Araujo Cunha Dos Santos  1 , Patrícia Pignataro  2 , José Augusto Nery  2 , Antônio Basílio de Miranda  3 , Diego Fonseca Soares  1 , Amanda Nogueira Brum Fontes  1 , Alice Miranda  2 , Helen Ferreira  2 , Neio Boéchat  4 , Maria Eugênia Novisck Gallo  2 , Euzenir Nunes Sarno  2 , Maria Leide W De Oliveira  5 , Philip Noel Suffys  1
Affiliations

Genotyping of Mycobacterium leprae from Brazilian leprosy patients suggests the occurrence of reinfection or of bacterial population shift during disease relapse

Adalgiza da Silva Rocha et al. J Med Microbiol. 2011 Oct.

Abstract

We performed genotyping of Mycobacterium leprae present in skin biopsy samples that were collected during the first and the second disease occurrences from eight leprosy patients, seven of whom were diagnosed as suffering from disease relapse. Sequence analysis of part of the M. leprae rpoB, folP1, gyrB and gyrA genes did not show genetic change that supported the presence of drug-resistant bacilli. However, we observed a synonymous nucleotide change at position 297 of gyrA among five of these patients, one presenting C to T (CgyrAT) and four presenting T to C (TgyrAC) at this position. Additional genotyping by analysis of the four short tandem repeats GAA, GTA9, AT17 and TA18 showed that the gyrA single nucleotide polymorphism change was accompanied by a change in short tandem repeat genotype. Our data suggest that leprosy relapse in these patients, living in an area endemic for leprosy, could be caused by M. leprae with a genotype different from the one that caused initial disease.

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