Editorial: Lepromatous leprosy, lipids, and lessons in immunology: what we can learn by using modern methods to study an ancient disease.

摘要

Leprosy, also sometimes called Hansen's disease, is a chronic infectious disease caused by My-cobacterium leprae, a slow-growing obligate intracellular bacterial padiogen. Leprosy has been an affliction of mankind for millenia; skeletal remains from a middle-aged adult male, who was buried inside a stone enclosure at Balathal in India sometime between 2500 and 2000 B.C., show pathological changes that are highly indicative of the diagnosis of leprosy [1]. According to the World Health Organization, 407,791 new cases of leprosy were detected worldwide in 2004 [2].