TITLE:
A Clinco-Bacteriological Study of Leprosy in Paediatric Age Group
AUTHORS:
Leena Das, Bijay Kumar Meher, Nikunja Bihari Das, Deepti Damayanty Pradhan, S. Pradeep, Jayashree Mohanty
KEYWORDS:
Leprosy in Children; Tuberculoid Leprosy; BCG
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Infectious Diseases,
Vol.3 No.4,
December
6,
2013
ABSTRACT:
Clinico-bacteriological study was done in 51 leprosy patients below 14 years of
age. Majority of the patients were males in the age group of 11-14 years. Nearly 84% had not received any prior treatment because of
lack of awareness and financial constraints. Only 11.76% had a positive contact
history. Skin lesions were present in all cases and 84.3% had lesions mainly on
the exposed areas of the body and their number was found to increase significantly
with advancing age (p The most common type of skin lesion was borderline tuberculoid (BT) in 53% cases.
Positivity of the skin smears increased significantly as the number of the skin
lesions per patient increased (p 0.001). Multibacillary cases were seen
in 15.6% of cases and found only in the age group of 10-14 years of age. No statistically significant
association between BCG vaccination and prevention of leprosy was seen.