Molecular epidemiology of tuberculosis in Kaohsiung City located at southern Taiwan, 2000-2008.

BACKGROUND:We present the first comprehensive analysis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) isolates circulating in southern Taiwan. In this 9-year population-based study, the TB situation in the Kaohsiung region was characterized by genotypic analysis of 421 MTB isolates. METHODS:All 421 isolates of MTB were analyzed by spoligotyping and MIRU-VNTR typing. Drug-resistance patterns were also analyzed. RESULTS:The percentage of EAI (East African-Indian) strains increased across sampling years (2000-2008) in southern Taiwan, whereas the proportion of Beijing lineages remained unchanged. Clustering was more frequent with EAI genotype infections (odds ratio = 3.6, p