Comparison of the performances of MLVA vs. the main other typing techniques for Bartonella henselae

• DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-0691.2008.02183.x
• Publication Date: 2009-09-28T09:02:44Z
• Authors: R. Bouchouicha; H.-J. Boulouis; M. Berrich; M. Monteil; B. Chomel; N. Haddad
• Keywords: Microbiology (medical); DNA, Bacterial; 0301 basic medicine; Bartonella henselae; [SDV]Life Sciences [q-bio]; Minisatellite Repeats; Sequence Analysis, DNA; DNA Fingerprinting; Sensitivity and Specificity; 300; Bacterial Typing Techniques; Electrophoresis, Gel, Pulsed-Field; 3. Good health; [SDV] Life Sciences [q-bio]; 03 medical and health sciences; Infectious Diseases

Bartonella henselae is a zoonotic pathogen of growing medical importance, which causes persistant bacteraemia in the feline reservoir host. Transmission to the incidental human host, which occurs essentially by cat scratch, is associated with most human cases of cat scratch disease but also with bacillary angiomatosis and peliosis, and other clinical manifestations (endocarditis, osteomyelitis, neuroretinitis...). Two different ‘genotypes’ (I ⁄ II) were described in 1996, based on minor sequence differences in the 16S rDNA. Different molecular techniques have been developed for B. henselae typing, revealing high genetic diversity among isolates. The most widely used has been pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). Recently, two other techniques have been developed: multilocus sequence typing (MLST) in 2003 and mutispacer typing (MST) in 2006, both based on the sequencing of small genomic sequences (nine different segments each). With MLST, Iredell et al. (2003) obtained only seven profiles for 37 tested isolates. Using MST, Li et al. (2006) detected 39 profiles for 126 cat isolates and 16 profiles for 75 human isolates. MLVA (multiple locus VNTR analysis) was developed in 2007 in our laboratory, based on the polymorphism of sequences called VNTRs (variable number tandem repeats). This technique involved the amplification of five main VNTRs, called BHV-A to E (for Bartonella henselae VNTRs). Thirty-one profiles were observed for 43 tested isolates [6]. In the present study, we compared MLVA performances with those of PFGE, MLST and MST, using common isolates and strains that had been previously tested by at least one of these techniques.