Mohanty Partha Sarathi, Naaz Farhah, Bansal Avi Kumar, Kumar Dilip, Sharma Sandeep, Arora Mamta, Singh Haribhan, Katara Pradumn, Soni Namrata, Patil Shripad A, Singh Manjula
Department of Epidemiology, National JALMA Institute for Leprosy and Other Mycobacterial Diseases, M. Miyazaki Marg, Tajganj, Agra, India.
Clinical Division, National JALMA Institute for Leprosy and Other Mycobacterial Diseases, M. Miyazaki Marg, Tajganj, Agra, India.
Mol Biol Res Commun. 2020 Apr;9(1):17-22. doi: 10.22099/mbrc.2020.35658.1464.
Leprosy is considered as a contagious disease and is still a health problem in several countries including India. Diagnosis of leprosy is based either on clinical findings or on acid fast bacilli staining. Due to low sensitivity of acid fast bacilli staining most of the leprosy cases were remained undetected. The present study aims to assess the efficacy of RLEP-PCR in the field condition where majority of the patients are acid fast bacilli negative and have early disease. A total of 80 suspected leprosy cases were recruited. Slit skin smear samples were taken for microscopy and molecular experimentation. DNA was extracted and RLEP-PCR was executed for all the 80 samples. To establish the statistical correlation χ test and Fisher's exact test were made. To elucidate the sensitivity of the test Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) was drawn. These 80 leprosy patients comprised of 38 paucibacillary and 42 multibacillary leprosy cases. Of 80 leprosy patients 18 (22.5%) were AFB positive while 53 (66.25%) leprosy cases were RLEP-PCR positive. The results of test of significance (P=0.0001) and Cohen's kappa coefficient () (0.614) indicated that the RLEP-PCR is a better diagnostic tool over AFB microscopy in case detection of leprosy. From the findings we concluded that RLEP-PCR could be used for the definitive detection of leprosy cases in accordance with the clinical findings in the field condition in the post elimination era of leprosy.
麻风病被视为一种传染病，在包括印度在内的几个国家仍然是一个健康问题。麻风病的诊断基于临床症状或抗酸杆菌染色。由于抗酸杆菌染色的敏感性较低，大多数麻风病病例仍未被发现。本研究旨在评估RLEP-PCR在大多数患者抗酸杆菌阴性且患有早期疾病的现场条件下的有效性。共招募了80例疑似麻风病病例。采集皮肤涂片样本进行显微镜检查和分子实验。提取DNA并对所有80个样本进行RLEP-PCR检测。进行χ检验和Fisher精确检验以建立统计相关性。绘制受试者工作特征曲线（ROC）以阐明该检测的敏感性。这80例麻风病患者包括38例少菌型和42例多菌型麻风病病例。80例麻风病患者中，18例（22.5%）抗酸杆菌阳性，而53例（66.25%）麻风病病例RLEP-PCR阳性。显著性检验结果（P=0.0001）和科恩kappa系数（0.614）表明，在麻风病病例检测中，RLEP-PCR比抗酸杆菌显微镜检查是一种更好的诊断工具。根据研究结果，我们得出结论，在麻风病消除后的时代，RLEP-PCR可根据现场条件下的临床症状用于麻风病病例的确诊检测。
