Cookies on this website

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you click 'Accept all cookies' we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies and you won't see this message again. If you click 'Reject all non-essential cookies' only necessary cookies providing core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility will be enabled. Click 'Find out more' for information on how to change your cookie settings.

Whole genome sequencing (WGS) can help relate Mycobacterium tuberculosis genomes to one another to assess genetic relatedness and infer the likelihood of transmission between cases. The same sequence data is now increasingly being used to predict drug resistance and susceptibility as well. Controlling the spread of tuberculosis and providing patients with the correct treatment are central to the World Health Organization's target to 'End TB' by 2035, to which the global prevalence of drug resistant tuberculosis remains one of the main obstacles to success. WGS has so far been applied largely to drug susceptible strains for the purposes of understanding transmission, leaving a number of analytic considerations before transferring what has been learnt from drug susceptible disease to drug resistant tuberculosis. We discuss these potential problems here, alongside some of the challenges to characterising the Mycobacterium tuberculosis 'resistome' - the optimal knowledgebase required for WGS-based assays to successfully direct individualised treatment regimens through the prediction of drug resistance and susceptibility in the future.

Original publication

DOI

10.1016/j.cmi.2016.10.014

Type

Journal article

Journal

Clin Microbiol Infect

Publication Date

24/10/2016

Keywords

MDR, XDR, drug resistance, surveillance, susceptibility, tuberculosis, whole genome sequencing