Leprosy Mailing List – March 3, 2015
Ref.: (LML) NYTimes Feb. 16. 2015: Research Finds a Reason Leprosy Has Persisted
From: PKD Das, Birmingham, UK and Indropo Agusni, Surabaya, Indonesia
Dear Prof. Agusni,
Thank you for your interesting letter (LML, February 21, 2015).
With due respect, it is problematic to understand why M.leprae will be alive at the high temperature of the bath in such a large quantity. Further, despite the fact that PCR method as fashionable method for proving that the organism is M.leprae, I, as an old fashioned person, was not that convinced. But I take your word for it.
Wish you all the success.
Kind regards, PKD
Dear Prof. Das,
Thanks for your comments. I was also having the same opinion before, but after so many years of MDT conducted with good supervision all the sources of infection should have been eradicated and no new leprosy cases should appear anymore. However, the fact is that new leprosy cases are still found and the numbers are not decreasing. Therefore, we came to an assumption that probably there could be "non-human sources of M.leprae". The size of amoeba is almost similar to that of a macrophage. It could be possible that the intra-cellular environment is also similar that makes the M.leprae survive. From literature study it is mentioned that some mycobacteria survive in some protozoa’s. These observations need more investigations of course. It could be that by improving the environment that the non-human source of M.leprae will be reduced.
Indropo Agusni.
LML - S Deepak, B Naafs, S Noto and P Schreuder
LML blog link: http://leprosymailinglist.blogspot.it/
Contact: Dr Pieter Schreuder << editorlml@gmail.com
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