Leprosy or Hansen's Disease

Leprosy or Hansen's disease is known as mankind's most feared disease. It has been around since the biblical era. It is caused by the organism Myobacteriumleprae, it is a Gram positive rod shaped bacillus that is hard to catch, and you need to have repeated contact to catch the disease. Not only is the disease hard to transmit, it also takes time for symptoms to show.

Leprosy is the first human bacteria to be identified dating back to 600 BC. Leprosy has two common forms, tuberculoid and lepromatous, lepromatous being the most severe, producing large disfiguring lumps and bumps. Tuberculoid and lepromatous produces changes in the skin such as sores and lesions and can make hands and feet insensitive, giving them a decreased sensation to touch, heat, or pain. These lesions can cause numbness or the loss of sensation throughout the body, and it can also cause muscle weakness. These symptoms, however, don't occur in a patient until three to five years that the patient has been infected. The period of becoming infected and the start of symptoms is known as the "leprosy incubation period." In some cases, these symptoms may show within 6 months after being infected to several decades. The fact that leprosy symptoms are so hard to catch, by the time a patient starts showing symptoms, it may already be too late.

For some patients who are lucky to have known that they have the disease in an early stage, they can start treatments to prevent the symptoms from ever showing. For those patients that are unfortunate to have a late diagnosis on the disease, leprosy patients can lose their fingers and toes. The loss of fingers and toes can follow from an injury to infections, adding a great deal of stress to the patient. Blindness, arthritis and amyloidosis are some of the associated complications with the disease. According to the Mayo Clinic amyloidosis is when amyloid proteins build up in your organs. Amyloidosis can affect the heart, the kidneys, liver, spleen, nervous system and the gastrointestinal tract. Worldwide, one to two million people are permanently disabled because of leprosy, patients are in treatment for the rest of their lives because of this disease.

Although leprosy is one of the oldest diseases known to man, scientists still aren't clear to how the disease spreads. Some think that the disease enters the body through the nose and possibly through broken skin. Scientists believe that the germ gets in the air through nasal discharge or droplets from the mouth from an untreated lepromatous patient.

According to the World Health Organization more than 213,000 people are infected mainly in Asia and Africa, with approximately 249,000 new cases reported in 2008. Over the past 20 years, more than 14 million leprosy patients have been cured, about 4 million since the year 2000. The rate of the disease has dropped from 21.1 per 10,000 inhabitants to less than 1 per 10,000 inhabitants