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Updated: May 1, 2026

Demonstrating a Multi-drug Resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis Amplification Microarray
Published on: April 25, 2014
Characterisation of pyrazinamide-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains isolated in Poland and Germany
A Napiórkowska1, S Rüsch-Gerdes2, D Hillemann2
1Department of Microbiology, National Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases Research Institute, Warsaw, Poland.
Background:
Pyrazinamide (PZA) is an important first-line anti-tuberculosis drug that is generally administered with isoniazid, rifampicin, ethambutol and streptomycin.
Objective:
To analyse the correlation between phenotypic resistance to PZA and genotype to find out whether the great diversity in pncA mutations is epidemiologically useful in tracing the transmission of PZA-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains among patients.
Materials And Methods:
The study included 71 PZA-resistant M. tuberculosis strains isolated from 62 Polish and 9 German patients. All strains were analysed using minimal inhibitory concentration value determination, pncA mutation analysis, spoligotyping, 24-loci mycobacterial interspersed repetitive units-variable number of tandem repeats (MIRU-VNTR) and insertion sequence (IS) 6110 restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) fingerprinting.
Results:
In 63 isolates, 37 (88.7%) different mutations in the pncA gene were observed, 13 of which had not been previously reported; 11 molecular families with the same MIRU-VNTR and IS6110-RFLP pattern were found. The same mutation was identified in three families, while different ones were identified in the remaining families.
Conclusion:
Mutations in the pncA gene are a major cause of PZA resistance in M. tuberculosis. pncA mutation analysis can be used to obtain valuable additional information, but should be applied with caution for epidemiological analysis.
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