Laboratory for Pathogenesis of Clinical Drug Resistance and Persistence, School of Public Health, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA.
Department of Microbiology, Public Health Agency of Sweden, Solna, Sweden.
Drug Resist Updat. 2023 May;68:100959. doi: 10.1016/j.drup.2023.100959. Epub 2023 Apr 6.
Here, we describe a clinical case of pyrazinamide-resistant (PZA-R) tuberculosis (TB) reported as PZA-susceptible (PZA-S) by common molecular diagnostics. Phenotypic susceptibility testing (pDST) indicated PZA-R TB. Targeted Sanger sequencing reported wild-type PncA, indicating PZA-S TB. Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) by PacBio and IonTorrent both detected deletion of a large portion of pncA, indicating PZA-R. Importantly, both WGS methods showed deletion of part of the primer region targeted by Sanger sequencing. Repeating Sanger sequencing from a culture in presence of PZA returned no result, revealing that 1) two minority susceptible subpopulations had vanished, 2) the PZA-R majority subpopulation harboring the pncA deletion could not be amplified by Sanger primers, and was thus obscured by amplification process. This case demonstrates how a small susceptible subpopulation can entirely obscure majority resistant populations from targeted molecular diagnostics and falsely imply homogenous susceptibility, leading to incorrect diagnosis. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a minority susceptible subpopulation masking a majority resistant population, causing targeted molecular diagnostics to call false susceptibility. The consequence of such genomic events is not limited to PZA. This phenomenon can impact molecular diagnostics' sensitivity whenever the resistance-conferring mutation is not fully within primer-targeted regions. This can be caused by structural changes of genomic context with phenotypic consequence as we report here, or by uncommon mechanisms of resistance. Such false susceptibility calls promote suboptimal treatment and spread of strains that challenge targeted molecular diagnostics. This motivates development of molecular diagnostics unreliant on primer conservation, and impels frequent WGS surveillance for variants that evade prevailing molecular diagnostics.
在这里,我们描述了一例吡嗪酰胺耐药(PZA-R)结核病(TB)的临床病例,该病例经常见分子诊断报告为吡嗪酰胺敏感(PZA-S)。表型药敏试验(pDST)表明为 PZA-R 结核病。靶向 Sanger 测序报告野生型 PncA,表明为 PZA-S 结核病。PacBio 和 IonTorrent 的全基因组测序(WGS)均检测到 pncA 的大部分缺失,表明为 PZA-R。重要的是,两种 WGS 方法均显示 Sanger 测序靶向的引物区域的一部分缺失。在存在 PZA 的培养物中重复 Sanger 测序未获得结果,表明 1)两种少数敏感亚群已经消失,2)携带 pncA 缺失的 PZA-R 多数亚群无法被 Sanger 引物扩增,因此被扩增过程所掩盖。该病例表明,少数敏感亚群如何完全掩盖靶向分子诊断的多数耐药群体,并错误地暗示同质敏感性,导致错误的诊断。据我们所知,这是首例少数敏感亚群掩盖多数耐药群体,导致靶向分子诊断出现假敏感性的报告。这种基因组事件的后果不仅限于 PZA。只要耐药相关突变不完全在引物靶向区域内,这种现象就会影响分子诊断的敏感性。这可能是由于我们在此处报告的基因组上下文的结构变化引起的表型后果,也可能是由于不常见的耐药机制。这种假敏感性的出现会导致治疗效果不佳,并使挑战靶向分子诊断的菌株传播。这促使开发不依赖于引物保守性的分子诊断方法,并迫切需要对逃避现有分子诊断的变异进行频繁的 WGS 监测。