| Summary: | <p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Mycobacterium intracellulare</it>, a species of the <it>Mycobacterium avium complex</it>, may be the cause of severe lung, lymphatic node, skin and bone/joint infections, as well as bacteriemia. The goal of this work was to identify Mycobacterial Interspersed Repetitive Unit-Variable Number Tandem Repeat (MIRU-VNTR) markers and to study their variability in a collection of isolates of <it>M. intracellulare </it>collected in humans. We studied 61 isolates collected in humans between 2001 and 2008, as well as the reference strain, <it>M. intracellulare </it>ATCC 13950.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We identified 45 MIRU-VNTR candidates, of which 17 corresponded to the MIRU-VNTR identified in the genome of <it>M. intracellulare </it>ATCC 13950. Among the 45 potential MIRU-VNTR, seven were selected for use in a MIRU-VNTR assay applied to our collection of isolates. Forty-four patterns were found by MIRU-VNTR typing and the discriminatory power of the assay was high with a Hunter-Gaston diversity index of 0.98. We do not have evidence of a particular distribution of MIRU-VNTR polymorphism according to clinical situation.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our results suggest that MIRU-VNTR typing could be used for molecular epidemiological studies applied to <it>M. intracellulare</it>.</p>
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