INTRODUCTION
Bovine tuberculosis is a chronic progressive disease caused byMycobacterium tuberculosis var. bovis which affects mainly cattle
and buffalo but also infects other mammalian species of mammals,
including humans (Cousins et al., 2003). The zoonotic potential of this
disease is related to the consumption of raw milk and unpasteurized
derivatives, representing the main route of transmission to humans, more
pronounced in rural areas. In the state of Pernambuco, a prevalence of
outbreaks of 2.87% and 0.62% of infected animals was reported in 2016,
with a tendency to concentrate in the Agreste region of the state and
with a predominance in dairy properties (Lima et al., 2016).
The interest in nucleic-acid based diagnostic procedures increased
because of the limitations of conventional testing such as lack of
sensitivity and specificity of the allergic-skin test and the long
period for confirming the presence of the agent by bacteriological
methods (Drewe and Smith, 2014). In addition, Molecular typing methods
have provided a great impetus in the molecular epidemiology studies of
the M. tuberculosis complex include comparing mycobacterial
genome sequences. Among the most used genotyping techniques for the
study of the M. tuberculosis complex are Spoligotyping and
Variable Number of Interspersed Repetitive Units of Mycobacteria
-MIRU-VNTR (Kamerbeek et al., 1997; Supply et al., 2006). The MIRU-VNTR
has higher discriminatory power and has currently been the method of
choice in the genotyping studies of Mycobacterium spp, and in
particular related to M. tuberculosis var. bovis, allows
identification of prevalent strains circulating in a herd or geographic
regions (Kamerbeek et al., 1997; Supply et al., 2006).
M. tuberculosis var. bovis infection has an impact on both animal
and human health, nonetheless, scarce are the studies in the region on
molecular genotyping. Given the lack of data on the contribution and
nature of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) to bovine TB
in the state of Pernambuco, we performed the genotypic characterization
of Mycobacteria isolated from bovines from dairy herds in this region
that were diagnosed clinically with tuberculosis, coming from dairy
herds in the state of Pernambuco.