Relapse and deformity among 2177 leprosy patients released from treatment with MDT between 2005 and 2010 in South India: A retrospective cohort study

Low rate of relapse after twelve-dose multidrug therapy for hansen’s disease: A 20-year cohort study in a brazilian reference center

“…The IR of HD relapse has been estimated in a few other cohort studies that included patients treated with twelve-dose MB-MDT, but followed-up for shorter periods than the present study. These studies have shown an IR ranging from 0.52/1000 py after a mean of 6.4 years follow-up/patient [ 12 ], 1.97/100 py in 162 patients followed for up to 8 years [ 11 ], to 7.5/1000 py after up to 7 years of follow-up [ 10 ]. Poojabylaiah et al .…”

“…[ 26 ] reported 37 relapses diagnosed in patients that received 10–19 doses of MDT in an average of 7.4 ± 5.3 years, with a minimum of 0.06 years after RFT. Other authors have reported relapse times of less than 5 years after RFT [ 10 , 25 ]. It is worth mentioning that the presence of active skin lesions and positive BI are known to persist after termination of MB-MDT regardless of the BI value at diagnosis [ 12 , 23 ] and may represent reactions.…”

“…It reflects a longer presence and duration of growth of the bacteria in the body, thus it could increase the risk of relapse. Prabu et al [ 10 ] observed a high proportion of DG 2 in the patients diagnosed with relapse. In the present cohort, although two patients progressed towards deformity during relapse, none of them had DG 2 at RFT.…”

“…This is of particular importance to the narrative of discussions regarding the future reduction of the length of HD therapy, which is recommended by the WHO [9]. Yet, few long-term studies have been published regarding the incidence rate (IR) of relapse in patients treated exclusively with fixed twelve-dose MDT [10][11][12]. By assessing the incidence of relapse in a cohort of MB-MDT-treated patients in a HD reference center, the present study brings new evidence that relapse after the twelve-dose MB-MDT scheme is not a significant problem in HD.…”

Relapse in leprosy and drug resistance assessment in a tertiary hospital of the state of Espírito Santo, Brazil

“…In the present study, men were the most affected by leprosy recurrence (17/56.6%), as also observed in other studies on the recurrence of infection 5 - 7 and in the Brazilian epidemiological bulletin of 2020 2 . Prabu et al (2015) 8 studied 58 patients with recurrence and observed a rate of 7.7 men/1,000 individuals per year, in comparison to 4.2 women/1,000 individuals per year.…”