To Conduct Chemotherapy Trials in Leprosy

摘要

Trial studies on the chemotherapy of leprosy using the drugs B663 and DDS are reported. The first study was primarily intended to evaluate B663 in lepromatous leprosy on the rate of reduction of morphological index to zero in patients with at least 4% solids, but due to the very slow admission of cases with solid bacilli, it was later modified to include cases with fewer than 4% solid bacilli. Results on these studied are discussed. The second study determined the effect of DDS therapy in outpatients with a wide variety of nonlepromatous lesions, under treatment (or lack of treatment). No untreated controls are possible, but it was foreseen from previous experience that many outpatients would fail to get DDS treatment soon after entering the study, thus constituting themselves into a limited control group. Whenever possible, the preliminary and yearly examinations (clinical, bacteriologic, histopathologic, lepromin) are equally detailed. Progress on this outpatient study is summarized.