Thermal sensibility tester. Can it be used to find early nerve damage in leprosy?

Sir, The newly-developed 'Thermal Sensibility Tester' , 1 ,2 has been used for several studies in the diagnosis of leprosy with interesting results, We discovered that it has not been clarified whether this Thermal Sensibility Tester was also designed for testing for early peripheral nerve damage (hand and foot) in leprosy patients, Some believe that this tester could be used in the fol low-up of nerve damage, In peripheral nerves unmyelinated C-fibres are supposedly also the earliest involved and therefore this belief would be an attractive concept. We have recently performed a study concerning the sensory thresholds in the hand in leprosy patients and have tested a control group of 50 normal people with the Thermal Sensibility Tester,3 We used 2 testers and before testing made sure that the tester was working, We tested 5 points on each hand 3 times and gave a positive score if 2 out of 3 were felt . This group was divided into 3 according to their profession; heavy, mixed and light work, Our findings are in Table I ,