Drug-resistant tuberculosis can be predicted by Mycobacterial interspersed repetitive unit locus

It is unknown whether MIRU-VNTR (Mycobacterial Interspersed Repetitive Unit-Variable Number of Tandem Repeat) is associated with drug resistance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The purpose of this study was to explore the ability of 24 MIRU loci to predict the drug resistance of Isoniazid (INH), Rifampicin (RFP), Streptomycin (SM), Ethambutol (EMB) and Pyrazinamide (PZA). We collected the drug resistance and MIRU loci information of 109 strains of M. tuberculosis from an open database. The results of multivariate logistic regression showed that the VNTR polymorphism of MTUB04 was related to INH resistance [odds ratio (OR) = 2.82, P = 0.00], RFP resistance (OR = 1.91, P = 0.02), SM resistance (OR = 1.98, P = 0.01) and EMB resistance (OR = 1.95, P = 0.03). MIRU40 was associated with INH resistance (OR = 2.22, P = 0.00). MTUB21 was connected with INH resistance (OR = 1.63, P = 0.02) and SM resistance (OR = 1.69, P = 0.01). MIRU26 was correlated with SM resistance (OR = 1.52, P = 0.04). MIRU39 was associated with EMB resistance (OR = 4.07, P = 0.02). The prediction power of MIRU loci were 0.84, 0.70, 0.85, and 0.74 respectively for INH (predicted by MTUB04, MIRU20, and MTUB21), RFP (predicted by MTUB04), SM (predicted by MTUB21 and MIRU26) and EMB (MTUB04 and MIRU39) through ROC analysis. Our results showed that MIRU loci were related to anti-tuberculosis drug and could predict the drug resistance of tuberculosis.