New Case Detection and Diagnosis in Children

 

Leprosy Mailing List – June 23,  2013 

Ref.:    (LML) New Case Detection and Diagnosis in Children

From:  Dr. Ben Naafs, The Netherlands

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Dear Editor,

Reading in LML about the discussion on the early diagnosis of  leprosy in children, I missed a very useful and easy test:  the "Sweat test".

How it can be done: use a whiteboard non-permanent (erasable, water-soluble) marker and make a mark within and outside the lesion. Let a child run around the hospital (for a candy). He will sweat everywhere, but not in the lesion. Outside the lesion the mark sweat drops will take up the dye and run down, inside the lesion the mark will stay intact.  Instead of running, the child could be exposed to heat.

The not sweating can also be shown by the "Iodide starch test". The macula and the surroundings are painted with 1% Iodide in alcohol. After drying starch is applied and the wet area shows brown-black, the patch will stay skin coloured.

I would like to remind the reader the excellent LML paper by Salvatore Noto about the diagnosis of leprosy (see attached file).

With kind regards

Dr Ben Naafs

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LML - S Deepak, B Naafs, S Noto and P Schreuder
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