Physical disability caused by leprosy in Brazil
As leprosy continues to be an important cause of physical disability in endemic countries such as Brazil, knowledge of the determinants of these events may lead to better management measures and targeted interventions to reduce the impact on affected individuals.
This study will be one that examines such factors among the most vulnerable portion of the Brazilian population.
Through a large cohort study.
It will be built from secondary data generated from a national registry of applicants to social benefit programs and will cover the period 2001-2015, including over 114 million individuals. Data were linked to the Leprosy Notification System using data from 2007-2014. Descriptive and bivariate analyses lead to multivariate analyses using multinomial logistic regression models with cluster-robust standard errors. Associations were reported as odds ratios with respective 95% confidence intervals.
Results.
21,565 cases of leprosy were identified for the period 2007-2014.
Most of the cases (63.1%) had grade 0 disability, with grade 1 and 2 representing 21% and 6%, respectively.
Factors associated with the increased odds of grade 1 and 2 disability were.
Age 15 and older
Less schooling
Polybacterial patients.
were mentioned.
Protective factors for both grades were being female and living in a municipality with a high incidence.
Sanchez, M.N., Nery, J.S., Pescarini, J.M. et al. Physical disabilities caused by leprosy in a 1 million cohort in Brazil. BMC Infect Dis 21, 290 (2021). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12879-021-05846-w
What is leprosy?
Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease caused by the fungus Leprosy, which affects the skin and peripheral nerves, but also causes lesions in the eyes, mucous membranes of the nose, throat and mouth, and some internal organs.
Conclusion
This cohort study shows that the grade of disability is higher in areas where there are public health and socioeconomic problems with infectious diseases. Early diagnosis, especially among young people, was described as a hint to prevent disability from infection due to various issues such as schooling and enforcement of infectious disease knowledge and measures.
What I feel from this study is that these environments make us more threatened by anxiety, but it is also troublesome to be the one who encourages anxiety when we can only do what we can do.
