Relapses in lepromatous leprosy

Abstract

1. (1) West African lepromatous patients whom modern treatment has rendered bacteriologically negative are liable to develop relapses in the form of fresh outcrops of macules even in spite of continued treatment. 2. (2) These relapses show clinical and histopathological characteristics of the dimorphous (indeterminate) form of leprosy. 3. (3) The lepromin test in these patients, as in the great majority of subsided lepromatous cases, is negative or at most very weakly positive.Consequently they might probably revert easily to lepromatous type. 4. (4) It would seem, therefore, that in many lepromatous patients modern treatment, although able to render them bacteriologically negative by the standard method of examination, cannot eradicate completely the bacilli, and that only continuation of treatment for an indefinite length of time can prevent these patients from reverting to a severe lepromatous form of the disease.