Abstract
The management of leprosy is still primarily based on chemotherapy and antibiotic therapy, e.g., on directly acting substances which are simply more toxic for the parasite than for the host cells. Little efforts have been devoted thus far to the evaluation of drug candidates whose indirect antiparasitic power involves stimulation of the natural mechanism of host-defense. The dramatic problem caused by rapid spreading of resistance to sulphones prompted us to correct that situation, namely by means of immunostimulating polysaccharides whose antiparasitic efficacy had already been established against experimental tumors (19). Particulate β 1–3 glucan extracted from the cell walls of Saccharomyces cerevisiae was first chosen, because of its ability to act on several strategic parameters of humoral and cellular immunity (1,5,8) leading to enhancement of nonspecific resistance in a first stage (6) followed by specific immunostimulation as a second stage. Especially relevant to the case of leprosy, in which macrophages are the host-cells to the parasitic mycobacteria, is that this glucan appears as a most potent and versatile reticuloendothelial (RE) system-stimulator (5) through both activation of preexisting macrophages and overproduction of fresh mononuclear phagocytes.
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