| A sublineage of Mycobacterium tuberculosis called RD Rio was described in 2007. Although only recently described, this strain may have been present previously in the population, and its identification in clinical isolates will elucidate bacterial transmission dynamics and host-pathogen interactions. This study evaluated the clonal diversity of the RD Rio sublineage in clinical isolates from Rio Grande-RS obtained between 1998 and 2001. Among the 45 samples analyzed by the MIRU-VNTR method, there were six clusters with two samples each and 33 orphan strains with unique pattern. The strains were distributed across several different lineages including LAM (34.04%), X (14.89%), Haarlem (12.77%), UgandaI (10.64%), S (4.26%), NEW-1 (2.13%) and Cameroon (2.13%);... |
