Ravindra Purushottam
TLM Community Hospital, India
Title: An introspection through Paucibacillary Leprosy: Appraisal using Ziehl-Neelsen staining and 16S rRNA Real Time Polymerase Chain Reaction
Biography
Biography: Ravindra Purushottam
Abstract
Diagnosis of leprosy is mainly based on the cardinal signs of the disease and the classification of paucibacillary (PB) and multibacillary (MB) cases are based on the number of skin lesions and nerve involvement. The present study was carried out to find out the important role played by the criterion of presence of acid fast bacilli (AFB) in slit skin smear (SSS) in classification of a case to MB. Further, in addition, presence of AFB and viable M. leprae were also determined in nasal swab smear (NSS) of all these cases to understand the role in transmission of infection. SSSs and NSSs were stained by Zeihl-Neelsen (Z-N) staining method for AFB. RNAs were extracted from 120 NS samples by using standard laboratory method. NSS and SSS were examined by direct microscopy and viability of M. leprae in NS samples were determined by real time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Control NS samples from 50 occupational staffs from hospitals were used as controls PB cases from tertiary care hospitals of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Safdarjung (Government of India), Delhi classified by number of patches showed presence of acid fast bacilli (AFB) in 7.5% of NSS and 15% of SSS samples respectively.