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The recent introduction of molecular methods has gained increased acceptance as a powerful tool for epidemiology and phylogeny of tuberculosis (TB). In this investigation, the efficiency of molecular typing using mycobacterial interspersed repetitive units (MIRUs) was assessed on a set of 116 Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex clinical isolates from 11 different geographic origins. The results obtained were compared with spoligotyping and variable number of tandem DNA repeats (VNTRs) typing data. Eighty-nine different MIRU profiles were obtained on the sample studied. Spoligotyping- or VNTR-defined clusters were split into subclusters by MIRU typing. Conversely, almost all of the clinical isolates clustered by MIRUs were shown to belong to spoligotyping-based defined clusters. The calculation of the discriminative power by the Hunter–Gaston index (HGI) for VNTR, spoligotyping and MIRU typing gave the …