An IS 6110 fingerprint analysis of 168 Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains isolated from Vietnamese patients has been performed; 67 strains are isolated in the North (N strains), strains isolated in the South comprise 66 strains from tuberculosis patients without AIDS (S strains) and 35 strains from tuberculosis patients with AIDS (A strains). The number of IS 6110 copies per strain varies from 1 to 22 copies. The population of N strains are different from the population of the overall South strains where there was a high prevalence of strains with more than 15 IS copies. That regional difference between the Vietnamese strains was clearly shown by the fingerprint patterns of strains with more than 6 IS. The populations S strains and the A strains have similar fingerprint patterns and 80% of the South strains belong to one big family. In the contrary, a high polymorphism was seen among the N strains
Tuberculosis ; Mycobacterium ; Sprains and Strains ; epedemiology