The common findings of ‘neural leprosy’ in India.

One in every ten cases of leprosy may never have the ‘skin patch/s’ or skin lesion/s’ that are usually identified as the cardinal sign of this disease

Statistics show that in around 5–10% of cases, leprosy disease is limited to the peripheral nerves only and is medically termed as ‘pure neural leprosy’. In such cases there are no hypopigmented patches with loss of sensation or nodular swellings over the body or earlobes.

In cases of ‘pure neural leprosy’ one or more nerves get affected resulting in nerve damage, loss of sensory followed by motor nerve function/s. Damage to nerve occurs slowly with or without any pain.

Timely detection and treatment is of paramount importance to prevent further nerve damage and spread of the disease.

Early symptoms include tingling in hands and feet along the nerves, numbness over the fingers and toes, unnoticed burns or blisters over hands and feet. These are the clinical indications that the peripheral nerves may be damaged /affected. But there are many other medical conditions besides leprosy, in which nerves get affected and may have similar clinical symptoms. This emphasizes the importance of establishing a proper and timely diagnosis.

Further it is noted that delay in diagnosis is 4–5 times more common among pure neural cases of leprosy, as people fail to attribute these symptoms to leprosy, resulting in a high proportion of cases with advanced deformities.

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Foundation for Medical Research practices a combination of basic biomedical and translational research. Our traditional research areas are leprosy, tuberculosis, medicinal plants and water related environmental research.

If you want to know more about our research specifically in Leprosy, read here — http://www.fmrindia.org/leprosy.html

If you want to read more about what we do, then have a look at www.fmrindia.org