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

[[abstract]]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