Molecular epidemiology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Ecuador: Recent advances and future challenges.

Publication date: Dec 01, 2024

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the three leading causes of death from a single infectious agent, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), together with COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS. This disease places a heavy burden on countries with low socio-economic development and aggravates existing inequalities. For the year 2021, estimations for Ecuador were 8500 TB cases, of which 370 were associated to multiple drug resistance (TB-MDR), and 1160 deaths. In the same year, Ecuador notified 5973 total cases, 401 of them were TB-MDR, pointing out an under diagnosis problem. The few molecular epidemiology studies available conclude that L4 is the most prevalent MTB lineage in Ecuador (with LAM as the main L4 sublineage), but L2-Beijing family is also present at low prevalence. Nevertheless, with less than 1 % MTB isolates genetically characterized by either MIRU-VNTR, spolygotyping or WGS to date, molecular epidemiology research must me improved to assist the TB surveillance and control program in Ecuador.

Concepts Keywords
Beijing Beijing
Ecuador Ecuador
Molecular L4
Tuberculosis LAM
Molecular epidemiology
MTB

Semantics

Type Source Name
disease MESH Tuberculosis
pathway KEGG Tuberculosis
disease MESH causes of death
disease IDO infectious agent
disease MESH COVID-19
disease MESH AIDS

Original Article

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