Özet:

Bovine tuberculosis, as a significant threat to both animal and human health, is a common global zoonotic disease. The emergence of molecular epidemiology has made it possible to gain a better understanding of the dynamics of disease transmission, and consequently, to come up with more effective control methods. The present study seeks to identify Mycobacterium bovis isolates in our region at a genotype level. To this end, the molecular epidemiological characteristics of Mycobacterium bovis strains isolated using classical methods and identified using molecular methods from the tissues and organs of cattle with suspected tuberculosis, obtained from slaughterhouses in the Konya province, or from those sent to Konya Veterinary Control Institute, were determined through genotyping. In the analysis of a total of 70 Mycobacterium bovis isolates, carried out using the MIRU-VNTR method, it was found that the repeat numbers for MIRU2, MIRU4, MIRU20, MIRU23, MIRU24, MIRU27 and MIRU39 loci did not vary between strains, while the repeat numbers for MIRU10, MIRU16, MIRU26, MIRU31, and MIRU40 loci varied between strains and had a high discriminatory power (0.25 ≤ h). It was further observed that 29 subgroups between 1-14 isolates formed. The movement of animals in our region, which occurs for several reasons, is considered to cause Mycobacterium bovis strains to vary between herds, and the fact that the cattle from which the isolates were sourced for our study came from different herds was considered to cause a variation in the discriminatory power in the MIRU loci.