Study of Histomorphological Spectrum of Lesions in Leprosy- One Year Study in S N Medical College, Bagalkote

Introduction: Leprosy one of the oldest and chronic infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium leprae. Leprosy is widely prevalent in India. Most of the cases present as hypopigmented patches or erythematous lesions over skin. However on histopathology these lesions show a wide spectrum of changes and variations.
Material And Methods: A retrospective study of diagnosed cases of leprosy on skin biopsy in Department of Pathology, S Nijalingappa Medical College from January 2015 to January 2016. Total of 63 cases were re-evaluated and classified according to Ridley-Jopling classification.
Results: Lesions were most oftenly seen in middle aged patients and most common symptom was hypopigmented patch (68.2%). Based on Ridley-Jopling classification, most cases were lepromatous leprosy (23.8%) followed by borderline lepromatous type (22.2%), indeterminate type (22.2%), tuberculoid leprosy (6.3%), borderline tuberculoid leprosy (17.4%) and borderline borderline leprosy (7.9%). Wade-Fite staining was done in 42 cases out of which 17 cases showed positive for acid-fast bacilli. Also noted that the bacilli load was >2+ in lepromatous spectrum.
Conclusion: Histopathology remains the important tool to diagnose the subtype of leprosy lesions. Lepromatous leprosy is most often associated with high bacterial load.