Results from the clinical trial of uniform multidrug therapy for leprosy patients in Brazil (U-MDT/CT-BR): decrease in bacteriological index.

BACKGROUND

Many believe that the regular treatment for multibacillary (MB) leprosy cases could be shortened. A shorter treatment allowing uniformity in treatment for all cases renders case classification superfluous and therefore simplifies leprosy control.

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the association between treatment duration and the trend in bacteriological index (BI) decrease over time among patients given Uniform MDT (UMDT) compared to those given regular MDT (RMDT).

METHODS

An open-label randomised clinical trial to compare the present routine treatment with one lasting six month. Patient intake was from March 2007 to February 2012. To evaluate the trend of BI as a function of time, a multilevel linear with mixed effects model was fixed to the two study groups and also four groups after stratification by BI, less than 3 and 3 or more.

RESULTS

The BI fall was higher among those taking RMDT, this difference however was not statistically significant.

CONCLUSION

The results presented here support the possibility of use of UMDT in the field, but further follow up is still needed for a final conclusion.