Efficacy and safety of multidrug therapy in paucibacillary leprosy in Singapore.

A total of 49 patients with paucibacillary leprosy (PB) who completed multidrug therapy (MDT) between 1985 and 1990 were analysed retrospectively for efficacy and complications; 20 (40.8%) patients had borderline-tuberculoid (BT), 13 (26.5%) had tuberculoid (TT), 1 (2.1%) had indeterminate (I) and 15 (30.0%) had pure neural (N) leprosy; 26 patients (76.5% of 34 non-neural leprosy) were skin biopsied for histological cure before MDT was stopped. Of these 26 patients, 19 had histological clearance at 6 months while the remaining 7 cleared beyond 1 year (18-36 months). The remaining 8 non-neural patients who refused rebiopsy had MDT for 6-8 months and the MDT was stopped when there was clinical clearance. Of the 15 neural (N) leprosy patients, 11 were given MDT for 6 months while the rest had 12-18 months of treatment; 1 patient with neural leprosy, who was treated for 6 months, relapsed with BT leprosy 18 months post-treatment. There were few complications among the 49 patients-4 (8.2%) patients developed reaction to dapsone, 1 (2.0%) had the dapsone syndrome, 2 (4.1%) had haemolytic anaemia and 1 (2.0%) had dapsone hepatitis; 7 (14.3%) patients had type I reaction.