From biblical times to the modern period, leprosy has been a disease associated with stigma. This mark of disgrace, physically present in the sufferers' sores and disfigured limbs, and embodied in the identity of a "leper", has cast leprosy into the shadows of society. This paper draws on primary sources, written in Spanish, to reconstruct the social history of leprosy in Puerto Rico when the U...

A twenty-year-old man with borderline tuberculoid leprosy with lesion on the penile shaft is reported. The lesion was detected when the patient developed an upgrading reaction after MDT. The diagnosis was confirmed by histopathology. Leprosy lesions are uncommonly reported on the penis and interestingly, some seem to have been detected during reactional episodes only. It appears that like facia...

PBMC from tuberculoid (BT/TT) and lepromatous leprosy (BL/LL) leprosy patients showed spontaneous apoptosis when cultured in the absence of mitogen for 24 h, which was inhibited by anti-tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) antibodies. Apoptosis was also inhibited by ionomycin and zinc, which also increased IL-2 and decreased TNF-alpha production. The increase in IL-2 production suggests a m...

Spontaneous bacterial peritonitis (SBP) is a potentially deadly complication of ascites. We describe a case of SBP caused by Listeria monocytogenes in a patient with alcoholic cirrhosis. This was associated with the unusual finding of ascitic fluid lymphocytosis, which previously had only been associated with tuberculoid or malignant ascites. Given increasing rates of cefotaxime-resistant SBP a...

Case 1: A 43 year-old, white man presented with a four month-history of six plaques well-circumscribed. Laboratory results, including several serological tests, as well as a radiological investigation, were either negative or normal. The Mitsuda reaction was positive (9 mm). He was put on prednisone therapy and multi-drug therapy (MDT) with subsequent healing of the cutaneous lesions and improv...