Leprosy, the ancient disease that has not been eradicated

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Leprosy is a very old disease that has not disappeared , but talking about it today is very different from what was mentioned in the Bible or in a story by Jack London that begins like this: “They take away our freedom because we are sick.” Microscopes and antimycobacterials eliminated stories that were a combination of psychological horror and apocalyptic drama. We now know what causes this disease and how it can be cured. Patients are no longer forced to ring bells or castanets to ward off people when they hear them pass by, as used to happen. Nor do we see thousands of people dying alone, as happened when getting infected was a sentence of death and isolation. Now the goal is to eradicate it .

This infection has been rare in the United States . The highest number of cases recor Phone Number List ded was in 1983, and since then, the numbers decreased significantly until the year 2000. However, reports indicate a gradual increase in recent decades.

Modern cases of an ancient disease
The medical history of two brothers appears in a report in the journal Medicina Tropical e Higiene . This is what happened. In 2007, a 25-year-old Mexican man living in Minneapolis went to the doctor after having itchy skin, swelling, pain in his extremities, and loss of eyebrow hair for a year and a half. These are symptoms of leprosy. After performing laboratory tests, she was diagnosed. He was cured, but his treatment was not easy, he had relapses, sores and weakness in his legs.

Five years later, his older sister, with whom the young man had only lived for a year, developed skin lesions: pale, purplish spots on his back, arms and legs. Other characteristic signs of the same disease.

Mycobacterium leprae bacteria lesion disease
Illustration of a photomicrographic view of the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae taken from a skin lesion. SMITH COLLECTION/GADO/GETTY IMAGES

Although most cases are detected in India, Brazil and Indonesia, a report published in Emerging Infectious Diseases indicates that leprosy is endemic in the southeastern United States, where the number of cases has doubled in the last decade, especially in Florida .

On the other hand, in Mexico, health authorities recorded 300 cases of leprosy in 2022. If we compare this figure with that of 1991, when there were 17,188 cases, a significant decrease is noted. However, the Ministry of Health highlights that more efforts are needed to stop the spread of the disease quickly. They have identified 12 priority municipalities that have a prevalence rate greater than one case per 10,000 inhabitants.



Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
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Fight stigma with science
Thanks to advances in scientific research, the illness of the two Minneapolis brothers was treatable. A first historic step toward understanding leprosy was taken in 1873, when Hansen observed the parasite that causes it under his microscope. Since then, this disease has also been known as Hansen's disease.

Today we know that this condition is not a divine punishment for the impure nor an evil of the soul, as was said in ancient texts, but rather a chronic infectious disease caused by  Mycobacterium leprae and  Mycobacterium lepromatosis.

It is also understood that contagion is not by inheritance, as was believed in the Middle Ages, but through respiratory droplets in prolonged contact with infected people, although cases of leprosy have also been detected in humans with the strain carried by nine-year-old armadillos. bands.