The History of Hansen's Leprosy Disease

Lechat (Miller & Love, 1989, p. 324) reports that the disease leprosy has struck or so 15 million, although estimates vary for several reasons. Foremost is that there ar relatively few population surveys conducted in those countries where leprosy presents; there argon many cases that go undiagnosed for a variety of reasons; the singing of sufferers is often inadequate or nonexistent; medical facilities for the spying of leprosy ar often inadequate or nonexistent; and, infected patients be often hidden from the authorities in close to communities. Thus, it is not clear as to the prevalence or incidence of leprosy.

In addition, given inadequate data, the age, sex, and social characteristics of those indivi duals infected with leprosy are questionable. What is clear is that leprosy tends to manifest in developing nations in which the socioeconomic status of infected patients is either below or at poverty, although cases have been reported in more economically go on countries. Hastings (Miller & Love, 1989, p. 310) does report evidence, however, that the manifestation of leprosy is universal among those individuals residing in economically impoverished areas in the sense that this disease is more prevalent among individuals having low standards of living. accustomed the empirica

repair (1990) reports that leprosy chemotherapy clears the nose of bacilli relatively rapidly, even when this course of treatment is sanely irregular, resulting in essentially noninfectious individuals. Those do drugss which are routinely utilized in the treatment of leprosy include dapsone, rifampin, clofazimine, and the thioamides prothionamide and ethionamide. For the management of erythema nodosum leprosum, there are the drugs thalidomide, clofazimine, and corticosteroids. While dapsone has been shown to be optimal to Mycobacterium leprae, cases of resistance to this drug began to be reported during the early 1980s. There have in addition been reported cases of secondary resistance to clofazimine. Given these reports, dual multibacillary therapy using dapsone and rifampin have been undertaken.

Hastings (Miller & Love, 1989) reports that, beyond the ignore of discovering the most effective medication, patient noncompliance is prevalent, particularly aft(prenominal) a 1-year course of treatment. Beyond these, the absence of empirically enunciate surveys, the lack of adequate medical facilities, and faulty patient reportage contribute to difficulties in the management of leprosy.

Cook, G. C. (1990). Parasitic disease in clinical practice. London: Springer-Verlag.

Harboe, M. (1989). Unsolved problems hindering progress in Leprosy control. Parasitic diseases: Treatment and control, Max J. Miller & E. J. Love, Eds. Boca Raton: CRC Press, Inc., pp. 317-322.

Reifsnyder (1980, p. 433) reports that Mycobacterium leprae in vivo appears to multiply with a generation time of approximately 26 hours, as opposed to the traditionally thought 2 weeks. Given the absence of immunity, this mycobacterium clears at a relatively delay rate in vivo, with a half-life of approximately 8 months. The period of communicability is highly diffuse, in that the course after transmitting with Mycobacterium leprae is highly variable. In fact, the majority of those individuals who are infecte
Ordercustompaper.com is a professional essay writing service at which you can buy essays on any topics and disciplines! All custom essays are written by professional writers!