Estudo de aspectos epidemiológicos, clínicos e imunológicos da hanseníase em município hiperendêmico

Abstract

Leprosy epidemiology has demonstrated the usefulness of clinical, molecular and immunological tools for geographical identification of the main disease occurrence foci and also of high risk disease acquiring areas. Leprosy control programs must consider its long incubation period, during which nearby contacts are the main disease risk group, and should make use of all available procedures for disease control. This paper aims to study clinical, epidemiological end immunological aspects of leprosy in a hyper endemic county of Maranhão state. It s a descriptive epidemiological study made with 599 leprosy contacts from October 2009 to October 2011 in the clinic of the Dermatology service at the Presidente Dutra unit of Maranhão Federal University Hospital. Most contacts observed were female (57,17%), more than 15 years old (64,59%), mostly between ages 20-59, an adult and productive life span. Household contact was the most frequent (74,95%) as was tuberculoid leprosy (30,00%). MB operational classification was most frequent (61,90% of females), most presenting one BCG vaccine scar, with males amounting to 63,00%. ELISA test was positive in 63,5% and ML-flow in 64,00%. These two test results suggests the use of immunological techniques as necessary tools for precocious diagnosis, surveillance and control of leprosy contacts as a means of interrupting leprosy transmission chain in the analyzed county.