Identification of Melioidosis Outbreak by Multilocus Variable Number Tandem Repeat Analysis

Endemic melioidosis is caused by genetically diverse Burkholderia pseudomallei strains. However, clonal outbreaks (multiple cases caused by 1 strain) have occurred, such as from contaminated potable water. B. pseudomallei is designated a group B bioterrorism agent, which necessitates rapidly recogni...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bart J. Currie, Asha Haslem, Talima Pearson, Heidie Hornstra, Benjamin Leadem, Mark Mayo, Daniel Gal, Linda Ward, Daniel Godoy, Brian G. Spratt, Paul Keim
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2009-02-01
Series:Emerging Infectious Diseases
Subjects:
Online Access:https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/15/2/08-1036_article
Description
Summary:Endemic melioidosis is caused by genetically diverse Burkholderia pseudomallei strains. However, clonal outbreaks (multiple cases caused by 1 strain) have occurred, such as from contaminated potable water. B. pseudomallei is designated a group B bioterrorism agent, which necessitates rapidly recognizing point-source outbreaks. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and multilocus sequence typing (MLST) can identify genetically related isolates, but results take several days to obtain. We developed a simplified 4-locus multilocus variable number tandem repeat analysis (MLVA-4) for rapid typing and compared results with PFGE and MLST for a large number of well-characterized B. pseudomallei isolates. MLVA-4 compared favorably with MLST and PFGE for the same isolates; it discriminated between 65 multilocus sequence types and showed relatedness between epidemiologically linked isolates from outbreak clusters and between isolates from individual patients. MLVA-4 can establish or refute that a clonal outbreak of melioidosis has occurred within 8 hours of receipt of bacterial strains.
ISSN:1080-6040
1080-6059