STUDY OF LEPROSY

II. REPORT. ON ACID-FAST BACILLI IN THE NOSTRILS OF LEPERS

Abstract

It is well known that a large number of acid-fast bacilli are scattered over the world, and that is necessary always to take care of these bacilli to make diagnosis of diseases such as tuberculosis or leprosy which are caused by acid-fast bacilli. Especially, by the case of leprosy often attention should be payed to the acid-fast bacillus in the nostrils, as a sign of early diagnosis.
Now, it may be thinkable, too, that these acid-fast bacilli also can exist even in the nostrils of healthy body, and exactly, we have recognised the bacilli in 19, 6% (20 from 102) in the nostrils at the examination of healthy body by cultural method.
In this paper we want to write the result of examination about lepers. The result is briefly as follows:
We examined about 110 lepers and isolated the bacilli from 15 lepers (13, 6%) by cultural method.
Tybe Number of examination Positive %
L. tuberosa 40 4 10, 0
L. nervosa 39 8 21, 0
L. maculosa 31 3 9, 7
total 110 15 13, 6
The isolated bacilli are differ with each other and some of them are very much resembled to those which we have isolated from nostrils of healthy body. From this point, it is extremely necessary to take care of these acid-fast bacilli to make diagnosis of leprosy according to the examination of leprabacillus in the nostrils.
(Author's abstract.)