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We have carried out to examine the influence of thymectomy and testosteroneadmini stration upon the growth of M. leprae in the foot-pads of golden hamsters.
The golden hamsters were thymectomized by the suction of their thymus at 3 weeks of age, and were received an inoculation of M. leprae into their respective right hind foot-pads at 1-2 weeks after the thymectomy.
The every day's intramuscular injection of testosterone propionate into each of their hind paws in the daily dosage of 0.2mg was continued for 6 days, at the first week, at 1 and 2 months after the inoculation. Thus, the total dosage was calculated to be 3.6mg per a hamster. Survival was good in all hamsters.
The inoculum was 2.5×10⁴ bacilli (SH-O passage strain) or 1.7×10⁴ bacilli (B2409 P12 passage strain) per the each foot-pad.
The details are shown in Table I. In the case of sham-thymectomized hamsters, the counts of M. leprae in each foot-pad rose to a plateau level of at most 10⁶. However, in the case of the thymectomized and the testosterone-administered female hamster, they rose until a level of 1.6-4.3×10⁷ at 24 weeks after the inoculation.
Futhermore, standing on the cases hitherto tested, it has been suspected that the counts of M. leprae in the female hamsters were higher than those in the male ones.
To sum up, it can be said that we have observed not only an enhance of susceptibility but a distinctly increased growth of M. leprae in the foot-pads of the golden hamsters.
In addition, there appears to offer new approches to the study on the immunology of leprosy.

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This survey was carried out on 1, 582 prosthesis teeth in 1, 175 cases of leprosy patients who had undergone prosthesis at the dental clinic of the Nagashima Aisei-en for the decade (1957-1966). The number of patients and their prosthesis teeth were compared according to the patients' sex, age and type of disease. The proportion of prosthesis teeth to the respective teeth was also examined on each class of patients'age. It was found that the proportion of prosthesis of the upper central and lateral incisors of leprosy patients was very high as compared with that of normal persons.

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