March 2026, Volume 4, Issue 3

Author

Amala Balasubramanian, Senthil Kumar Arumugam Subramanian and Lakshmi Priya Karunanidhi

Abstract

Background: Leprosy is an ever challenging, chronic infectious disease, caused by Mycobacterium leprae. The variations in clinical forms of leprosy depends on several factors namely nutrition, immune status of the host and bacillary load. Histological diagnosis of leprosy is more specific in typing the disease when compared to clinical diagnosis. This retrospective study was aimed to find out the clinico pathological correlation of various spectrum of Hansen 's disease and to estimate the value of histopathology for the diagnosis and appropriate planning of treatment. Materials and Methods: All clinically diagnosed cases of leprosy enrolled in the leprosy register between January 2001 to December 2025 were analysed retrospectively. Clinical diagnosis was correlated with that of histopathological diagnosis. Results: A total of 975 cases were enrolled, of which biopsy was done in 612 cases. There were 437(71.4%) males and majority of patients were in the age group of 21- 30 years (30.1%). Clinically the most common type was BT with 53.6% (328) followed by BL 19.1% (117), LL and IL each 9.50% (58). Mid borderline was diagnosed only in 9(1.5%) out of 612 cases. Histologically also the most common type was BT (55.4%) followed by IL (17.3%). The overall concordance rate was 67.48%. Correlation was maximum in BT (79.57%) followed by IL (70.68%), LL (63.79%), HL (61.1%), BL (45.29%), BB (11.1%) and least in TT (9.2%). Conclusion: Histopathology should be preferably done in all cases of leprosy for better correlation which inturn helps in management of such cases in post elimination era.