Epidemiology of tuberculosis in lepromatous leprosy patients in tamil nadu, india: a case study

Mycobacterium leprae (M. leprae) and Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) cause leprosy and tuberculosis respectively are considered chronic pathogens causing disease that take months sometimes year‘s to develop and without treatment eventually result in death. Lepromatous leprosy individuals have tuberculosis as co-infection, which means one organism weakens the patient and reduces the ability of the immune system to respond adequately or rapidly enough and this allows a more virulent organism to infect the patient some time lepromatous leprosy patients were well protected from tuberculosis infection by cross immunity. In this context the 73 lepromatous leprosy patients from leprosy rehabilitation centre were screened for tuberculosis as co-infection. The prevalence of oral pathogens among lepromatous leprosy patients shows the presence of Staphylococcus sp (30%) as predominant followed by Bacillus sp (23%), Streptococcus sp (21%), and Diplococci- S. pneumoniae (1%). The dominant of Staphylococcus sp in the sputum specimens of lepromatous leprosy patients shows that they were suffering from respiratory infections such as sinusitis, pneumonia, tonsillitis and pharyngitis.