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From: sdyer@bbncc5.UUCP (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Re: What about lepers?
Message-ID: <569@bbncc5.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 5-Oct-85 23:31:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: bbncc5.569
Posted: Sat Oct  5 23:31:41 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 7-Oct-85 05:54:04 EDT
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Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, MA
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> Which makes me wonder. How frequent were leprosy cases lately?
> Any cure/vaccination breakthroughs?
> My for all I know the only way people were battling leprosy was 
> isolation of afflicted. Any attempts of cure were ending very
> sadly for the good docs for last 10000 yrs or so.
> Does anyone have a more detailed picture?

Last week, the excellent PBS series, "Search for the Killers", was
devoted to the treatment of leprosy.  If you can find it being repeated
in the next few days, by all means watch it, for it answers most of your
questions.  There is also a companion book of the same name, which I
haven't read.

Briefly, leprosy is endemic to many equatorial regions, and it is estimated
that 12 to 20 million people throughout the world have the disease, with
2000 or so known cases in the US.  Leprosy is about as curable as
tuberculosis is these days, which means an individual has an excellent
chance of 100% cure.  Like TB (both diseases are caused by mycobacteria),
the drug regimen has to last about two years.  Most of the deformities
which we associate with leprosy come from its effects on peripheral nerves
(claw hand) and the anesthesia (and accidental damage) associated with
them.  Early leprosy isn't disfiguring and prompt drug treatment can
prevent such 'marks of Cain.'  A Trivial Pursuit fact: thalidomide, the
infamous sleeping pill of the 1960's which caused such severe birth
defects, is useful in treating some of the disfiguring reactions of
the body to the lepra bacilli.

It is very difficult to "catch" leprosy; only about 5% of those exposed to
the bacilli develop the disease.  It seems one has to have a particular
immunological deficiency (and that DOESN'T mean late nights at the disco
and poor nutrition).  The show detailed some promising methods of
increasing a susceptible individual's immunoreactivity to lepra bacilli
using a variety of vaccine-like materials.  It wasn't clear to me from the
show that these studies were more than very early research; that is, there
isn't a vaccine available yet.
-- 
/Steve Dyer
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