Mutation EthAW21R confers co-resistance to prothionamide and ethionamide in both Mycobacterium bovis BCG and Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv

Julius Mugweru; Jianxiong Liu; Gaelle Makafe; Gift Chiwala; Bangxing Wang; Changwei Wang; Xinjie Li; Yaoju Tan; Wing Wai Yew; Shouyong Tan; Tianyu Zhang

doi:10.2147/IDR.S163965

Mutation EthA_W21R confers co-resistance to prothionamide and ethionamide in both Mycobacterium bovis BCG and Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv

Infect Drug Resist. 2018 Jun 13:11:891-894. doi: 10.2147/IDR.S163965. eCollection 2018.

Authors

Julius Mugweru^#^{1

2

3}, Jianxiong Liu^#⁴, Gaelle Makafe^{1

2}, Gift Chiwala^{1

2}, Bangxing Wang¹, Changwei Wang¹, Xinjie Li⁴, Yaoju Tan⁴, Wing Wai Yew⁵, Shouyong Tan⁴, Tianyu Zhang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou Regenerative Medicine and Health Guangdong Laboratory (GRMH-GDL), Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health (GIBH), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Guangzhou, China.
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
³ Department of Biological Sciences, University of Embu, Embu, Kenya.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, Department of Clinical Laboratory, Guangzhou Chest Hospital, Guangzhou.
⁵ Stanley Ho Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Ethionamide (ETA) and prothionamide (PRO) are interchangeably used in tuberculosis (TB) chemotherapy regimens. Subtle discrepancies between biochemical and genetic information on the modes of sensitivity and resistance of isoniazid (INH) and ETA warrants further studies. We report a new mutation - EthA_W21R - in Mycobacterium bovis Bacillus Calmette-Guérin that corresponds with co-resistance to both PRO and ETA, which to the best of our knowledge has not been reported before. Our findings suggest that mutation EthA_W21R could be used as a marker site for testing PRO and ETA cross-resistance.

Keywords: EthAW21R; co-resistance; isoniazid; molecular marker; mutation; thioamides.