What is it about?
Leprosy is a chronic bacterial infection. It is currently treated by a combination of antibacterial drugs. This combination treatment, known as multidrug treatment (MDT), is useful in speeding up clinical improvement of the disease. Single-dose MDT has been shown to be as effective as the six-month course recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) in milder disease with up to five skin lesions. However, a uniform MDT regimen given for only six months was found to be ineffective in patients having more than five lesions on the skin. A 4-week course of ofloxacin and rifampicin daily was also found to be ineffective in the patients with more than 5 lesions when compared with the current 1-year course of MDT recommended by WHO.
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Why is it important?
This review sums up the current evidence on various aspects of management of leprosy. One important recommendation in this review is that care has to be taken when extrapolating the evidence to patients in developed countries, as most of the studies have been carried out in developing countries, and in regions where leprosy is endemic.
Perspectives
Writing this chapter was a great new experience as the book 'Evidence-based Dermatology' has a unique format of clarifying various aspects of management of diseases by posing structured questions and answering those by summarizing and analyzing the evidence. I am sure that the chapters will prove to be useful for individual practitioners in delivering evidence-based management.
Professor Saumya Panda
KPC Medical College and Hospital
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Leprosy, June 2014, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/9781118357606.ch49.
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