In an inquiry about the evolution of tuberculoid leprosy, I wrote in 1936 (7), that I had not seen a typical case of tuberculoid leprosy-characterized clinically by its well-defined lesions, bacteriologically by the absence of bacilli, histologically by tuberculoid structure, and immunologically by a positive reaction to lepromin-undergo transformation to the typical lepromatous condition with ...

Although knowledge of the symptomatology of leprosy is very complete, we believe it of interest to describe the clinical picture presented by lepromatous leprosy in Costa Rica, with respect to the characteristics of its cutaneous and visceral manifestations. At the outset it is to be said that the 177 cases of leprosy seen in Costa Rica from 1945 to the end of 1947 were classified as follows: l...

From a series of 343 nerve biopsies taken by one clinician over a period of 12 years in Nepal, this paper describes the histopathological findings in 153 biopsies from 119 patients suffering from tuberculoid, borderline (dimorphous) or lepromatous leprosy, who were untreated at the time of first presentation and diagnosis. They were taken during the course of other studies, mainly concerned wit...

OBJECTIVE To study the profile of leprosy cases at Nkhotakota District Hospital in Central Region of Malawi. DESIGN Retrospective cross-sectional study of all registered cases of leprosy from records over a nine year period (January 1992 to April 2001) SETTING Nkhotakota District Hospital-Central Region of Malawi. RESULTS In total 526 cases of leprosy were identified from the records. The...

Serum levels of soluble tumor necrosis factor alpha receptor I (sTNF-RI) were elevated in patients with lepromatous (LL) reactional-state type II leprosy, and sTNF-RII levels were increased in patients with full tuberculoid (TT) or LL type II leprosy. The sTNF-R in sera from patients with type II leprosy, but not other forms of leprosy, inhibited recombinant TNF cytolytic activities in vitro. T...

Hepatic involvement in a lepromatous leprosy (LL) patient is reported. The serum concentrations of aminotransferases were much higher than previously described in the leprosy literature. Other causes for hepatic damage were ruled out. Such hepatic involvement and elevation of aminotransferases have never been described in leprosy.

Leprosy is a contagious and chronic systemic granulomatous disease caused by Mycobacterium leprae (Hansen s bacillus). It is transmitted from person to person and has a long incubation period (between two and six years). The disease presents polar clinical forms (the multibacillary lepromatous leprosy and the paucibacillary tuberculoid leprosy), as well as other intermediate forms with hybrid c...