Poster communication in WVA/WMA Global Conference on One Health

May 21^st, 2015

Sanchez-Coppel N., Liandris E., Romero B., Perez-Sancho M., Bezos J., Casal C., Alende T., Gutierrez A. and de Juan L.

The genus Mycobacterium includes important zoonotic (Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex, MTBC), human (M. leprae) and animal (M. paratuberculosis) pathogens and saprophytic or opportunistic members, usually referred as Non Tuberculous Mycobacteria (NTM). Identification of mycobacteria at the species level has been based traditionally on biochemical tests, which require long incubation and have low discriminatory power. Advances in molecular and typing techniques have considerably decreased the time of identification and had led to the description of several new species. Matrix assisted laser desorption ionization time of flight spectrometry (MALDI TOF MS) has been recently introduced as a rapid and simple alternative for the identification of bacteria. The MALDI Biotyper platform developed by Bruker includes a mycobacteria library (version 1.0) composed of 94 species and 173 MSPs. In the present study, we tested the possibility to integrate the MALDI Biotyper platform in a veterinary mycobacteriology laboratory for the routine identification of mycobacteria other than tuberculosis. For this purpose, a total of 108 mycobacteria isolated from animal tissues during the period 2013-2014 were tested by MALDI Biotyper and the results were compared to those of molecular techniques. MALDI Biotyper identified almost 74% of the isolates when compared to sequencing. Among the misidentified species 4 belonged to species that are not included in the MALDI Biotyper library and 11 belonged to members of the group X of M. avium. When these isolates were excluded from the analysis, the percentage of concordance between MALDI Biotyper and molecular techniques rose up to 90% rendering MALDI Biotyper a valuable, simple and economic tool for the identification of mycobacterial species. The incorporation of MALDI Biotyper in the routine work of the mycobacteriology laboratory is expected to save time and decrease the cost of mycobacterial identification. However, more research is needed in improving the extraction protocol and broadening the species entries in the mycobacteria library. The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest

	Servicio de Micobacterias (MYC). Centro de Vigilancia Sanitaria Veterinaria (VISAVET). Universidad Complutense (UCM).
	Departamento de Sanidad Animal. Facultad de Veterinaria. Universidad Complutense (UCM).