File: <leprosy.htm> <Medical Index> <General Index> Site Description Glossary <Navigate to Home>

LEPROSY

(Contact)

Please CLICK on underlined links for details:

Leprosy or Hansen's Disease is a bacterial disease that affects low numbers of people worldwide, especially in more humid tropical and subtropical regions. Two species of bacteria are involved: Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis. By 2016 it has been effectively treated by a regime of bactericides for 6 to 12 months, or until no evidence of the infection exists.

A pathway to the acquisition of Leprosy has been considered vague over the many centuries that it has plagued mankind. Matheson (1950) considered the possibility of some fly species being vectors of the disease, but he emphasized that this means of distribution is probably not great or has not been fully investigated. Service (2008) has no mention of the disease in his book Medical Entomology For Students. Nevertheless, Leprosy appears in unexpected localities periodically, as the 2016 case in the Indian Hills community of Riverside County, California. Laboratory transmission of leprosy to sandflies and Triatomidae has been successful, but natural transmission by such potential vectors is not yet proven.

In North America armadillos can serve as reservoir hosts.

Further investigation into Leprosy will be pursued forthwith and results recorded in this section.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Key References: <medvet.ref.htm> <Hexapoda>

Matheson, R. 1950. Medical Entomology. Comstock Publ. Co, Inc. 610 p.

Service, M. 2008. Medical Entomology For Students. Cambridge Univ. Press. 289 p

Legner, E. F. 1995. Biological control of Diptera of medical and veterinary importance. J. Vector Ecology 20(1): 59_120.

Legner, E. F. 2000. Biological control of aquatic Diptera. p. 847_870. Contributions to a Manual of Palaearctic Diptera,

Vol. 1, Science Herald, Budapest. 978 p.