Clinical and microbiological profile of Hansen’s diseases in a tertiary care centre of southwest Bihar

Abstract

Leprosy or Hansen’s disease is a slowly progressive infection caused by mycobacterium Lepra. It has been reported from Bihar that false positive diagnosis is a major issue and decline in false positive diagnosis is not statistically significant. Present study has been designed primarily to study the clinical presentation and microbiological profile of patients presenting with symptoms of Hansen disease and secondarily to know the smear positivity of patients with clinical manifestation of leprosy. After enrolment of patients a detail clinical examination was done and demographic information of patient was recorded on predesigned Performa. After taking consent from enrolled patients slit skin smear was obtained as pre standard protocol. All patients below 20 years of age were slit smear staining smear negative for AFB. In our study 55(38.19%) patients with clinical manifestation were from 31 to 50 years of age among them 18(30 % of total AFB positive) was AFB positive. Among 30 patients with 16 (53.34%) patients have bacteriological index 6+ and 8 patients have bacteriological index 1+. From present study we can conclude that there was male predominance and in most of the patients who were smear staining positive have bacteriological index more than 6+. Most common age group presented with clinical symptom and AFB positive were in 3 and 4 decade of life. Hypopigmented macules were common presentation and AFB positive was most frequent in them.