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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, April 2006, p. 1509-1518, Vol. 44, No. 4
0095-1137/06/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JCM.44.4.1509-1518.2006
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Multiple-Locus Variable-Number Tandem Repeat Analysis of Neisseria meningitidis Yields Groupings Similar to Those Obtained by Multilocus Sequence Typing

Laboratory for Vaccine-Preventable Diseases, National Institute of Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, The Netherlands,¹ Netherlands Reference Laboratory for Bacterial Meningitis, Department of Medical Microbiology, Academic Medical Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands²

Received 18 August 2005/ Returned for modification 9 October 2005/ Accepted 4 February 2006

We identified many variable-number tandem repeat (VNTR) loci in the genomes of Neisseria meningitidis serogroups A, B, and C and utilized a number of these loci to develop a multiple-locus variable-number tandem repeat analysis (MLVA). Eighty-five N. meningitidis serogroup B and C isolates obtained from Dutch patients with invasive meningococcal disease and seven reference strains were analyzed using MLVA and multilocus sequence typing (MLST). MLVA, based on eight VNTR loci with limited variability in the number of repeats, yielded clustering of the strains similar to that obtained by MLST, with congruence between both methods amounting to 69%. The ability to recognize clonal complexes makes MLVA a valuable high-throughput method to serve as a tool complementary to MLST. Four highly variable VNTR loci were used in a second assay to analyze N. meningitidis serogroup C strains collected during an outbreak of meningococcal disease in The Netherlands. Typing based on the latter VNTR loci enabled differentiation of isolates with identical MLST sequence types and grouped epidemiologically related strains.

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