Paucibacillary cases of leprosy are now routinely being treated with two drugs, namely rifampicin (RFP) and diarnino diphenyl sulphone (DDS) . We report here a paucibacillary case of borderline-tuberculoid (BT) leprosy, who had taken a one-year course of daily RFP monotherapy, and relapsed as BT five years after the release from treatment. Mycobacterium Zeprae derived from this case was sensiti...

In the world of today one finds that between 1 1 and 1 2 million people have suffered from leprosy. l Much research has been conducted on the medical aspects of leprosy, but there is a need in various parts of the world for specialized studies of the psychosocial aspects of leprosy? This need relates to the fact that comparatively little research on the psychosocial needs of leprosy patients ha...

Histoid leprosy, an uncommon variant of lepromatous leprosy, develops usually as relapse in lepromatous patients who are on dapsone monotherapy, but uncommonly arises de novo. This rare form of the disease, with unique clinical and histopathological features, may pose a diagnostic challenge even to astute clinicians. We report the case that occurred de novo in an elderly who presented with smal...

The lepra cell, which Virchow first described and which bears his name, is the anatomic characteristic of the granuloma of lepromatous leprosy. Unna demonstrated that the vacuoles of the foamy cells of Virchow are due to fat in the cytoplasm, and not to edema as was thought by the author who saw them first. Mitsuda (4), in a paper published in 1936, claims to have stained that substance with su...

The manifestation of leprosy in humans is largely determined by host immunity to Mycobacterium leprae and is a model for immunoregulation in a human disease. However, animal models available for exploration of the leprosy spectrum are inadequate. This study explored M. leprae infection in mice deficient in inducible nitric oxide synthase, and this report describes elements resembling borderline...

Dapsone-induced agranulocytosis is a rare adverse effect. There are various reports of agranulocytosis in patients treated with dapsone for malaria prophylaxis and other dermatological diseases. However, this adverse reaction in leprosy is not often encountered. We describe agranulocytosis in a young patient who was taking dapsone (100 mg) for borderline-tuberculoid leprosy in a rural environment.

Epidermodysplasia verruciformis (EV) is triggered by a variety of mechanisms that at least partly include genetic background. We present a Brazilian man with a 30-year history of flat, wart-like lesions with clinical, histopathological, and evolutive aspects consistent with papillomavirus (HPV)-associated EV. Histological analysis of the wart lesions showed epidermis with hyperkeratosis, regula...

INTRODUCTION Leprosy exhibits a wide spectrum of presentation, varying from the tuberculoid to the lepromatous pole, with immunologically unstable borderline forms in-between, depending upon the immune status of the individual. The clinical system of classification for the purpose of treatment includes the number of skin lesions and nerves involved as the basis for classifying the patients into...