Leprosy is an ancient infectious disease with an annual global incidence of around 200,000 over the past decade. Since 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends single-dose rifampicin as ...post-exposure prophylaxis (SDR-PEP) for contacts of leprosy patients. The Post ExpOsure Prophylaxis for Leprosy (PEOPLE) trial evaluated PEP with a double dose of rifampicin in Comoros and Madagascar. Preliminary results of this trial show some reduction in leprosy incidence in intervention villages but a stronger regimen may be beneficial. The objective of the current Bedaquiline Enhanced ExpOsure Prophylaxis for LEprosy trial (BE-PEOPLE) is to explore effectiveness of a combination of bedaquiline and rifampicin as PEP.
BE-PEOPLE is a cluster-randomized trial in which 44 clusters in Comoros will be randomized to two study arms. Door-to-door screening will be conducted annually during four years, leprosy patients identified will be offered standard of care treatment. Based on study arm, contacts aged five years and above and living within a 100-meter radius of an index case will either receive bedaquiline (400-800 mg) and rifampicin (150-600 mg) or only rifampicin (150-600 mg). Contacts aged two to four years will receive rifampicin only. Household contacts randomized to the bedaquiline plus rifampicin arm will receive a second dose four weeks later. Incidence rate ratios of leprosy comparing contacts who received either of the PEP regimens will be the primary outcome. We will monitor resistance to rifampicin and/or bedaquiline through molecular surveillance in all incident tuberculosis and leprosy patients nationwide. At the end of the study, we will assess anti-M. leprae PGL-I IgM seropositivity as a proxy for the population burden of M. leprae infection in 8 villages (17,000 individuals) that were surveyed earlier as part of the PEOPLE trial.
The COLEP trial on PEP in Bangladesh documented a reduction of 57% in incidence of leprosy among contacts treated with SDR-PEP after two years, which led to the WHO recommendation of SDR-PEP. Preliminary results of the PEOPLE trial show a lesser reduction in incidence. The BE-PEOPLE trial will explore whether reinforcing SDR-PEP with bedaquiline increases effectiveness and more rapidly reduces the incidence of leprosy, compared to SDR-PEP alone.
NCT05597280. Protocol version 5.0 on 28 October 2022.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The island of Anjouan (Comoros) is highly endemic for leprosy with an annual incidence of 5-10/10,000. In May/June, 2015 single-dose Rifampicin post-exposure prophylaxis (SDR-PEP) was administered to ...269 close contacts of 70 leprosy-patients in four villages as a pilot programmatic intervention. Two years later we revisited the villages for follow-up investigations. The main aim of our study was to quantify spatial associations between reported leprosy cases before and after PEP implementation. A secondary aim was to assess the effect of this single round of SDR-PEP at the individual level.
We conducted door-to-door leprosy screening in all four villages in August/September, 2017. We screened all consenting individuals for leprosy and recorded geographic coordinates of their household. We also recorded whether they had received SDR-PEP and whether they had been diagnosed with leprosy, before or after the 2015 intervention. We fitted a Poisson model with leprosy as outcome and distance to the nearest pre-intervention case and SDR-PEP as predictors.
During the survey we found 114 new cases among 5760 contacts screened (2.0% prevalence), in addition to the 39 cases detected in the two preceding years. We found statistically significant associations of incident leprosy with physical distance to index cases ranging from 2.4 (95% confidence interval (95% CI) 1.5-3.6) for household contacts to 1.8 (95% CI 1.3-2.5) for those living at 1-25 m, compared to individuals living at ≥75 m. The effect of SDR-PEP appeared protective but did not reach statistical significance due to the low numbers, with an incidence rate ratio (IRR) of 0.6 (95% CI 0.3-1.2) overall, and 0.5 (95% CI 0.2-1.3) when considering only household contacts.
This pilot demonstrated an increased risk of leprosy in contacts beyond the household, therefore a wider circle should be considered for chemoprophylaxis. Baseline surveys and extended contact definitions are essential for improving SDR-PEP effectiveness.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Leprosy is an ancient infectious disease with a global annual incidence that has plateaued above 200,000 new cases since over a decade. New strategies are required to overcome this stalemate. ...Post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) with a single dose of Rifampicin (SDR) has conditionally been recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), based on a randomized-controlled-trial in Bangladesh. More evidence is required. The Post ExpOsure Prophylaxis for Leprosy (PEOPLE) trial will assess effectiveness of different modalities of PEP on the Comoros and Madagascar.
PEOPLE is a cluster-randomized trial with villages selected on previous leprosy-incidence and randomly allocated to four arms. Four annual door-to-door surveys will be performed in all arms. All consenting permanent residents will be screened for leprosy. Leprosy patients will be treated according to international guidelines and eligible contacts will be provided with SDR-PEP. Arm-1 is the comparator in which no PEP will be provided. In arms 2, 3 and 4, SDR-PEP will be provided at double the regular dose (20 mg/kg) to eligible contacts aged two years and above. In arm 2 all household-members of incident leprosy patients are eligible. In arm 3 not only household-members but also neighbourhood contacts living within 100-m of an incident case are eligible. In arm 4 such neighbourhood contacts are only eligible if they test positive to anti-PGL-I, a serological marker. Incidence rate ratios calculated between the comparator arm 1 and each of the intervention arms will constitute the primary outcome.
Different trials on PEP have yielded varying results. The pivotal COLEP trial in Bangladesh showed a 57% reduction in incidence over a two-year period post-intervention without any rebound in the following years. A study in a high-incidence setting in Indonesia showed no effect of PEP provided to close contacts but a major effect of PEP provided as a blanket measure to an entire island population. High background incidence could be the reason of the lack of effect of PEP provided to individual contacts. The PEOPLE trial will assess effectiveness of PEP in a high incidence setting and will compare three different approaches, to identify who benefits most from PEP.
Clinicaltrials.Gov. NCT03662022. Initial Protocol Version 1.2, 27-Aug-2018.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The World Health Organization (WHO) endorsed diagnosis of leprosy (also known as Hansen's disease) entirely based on clinical cardinal signs, without microbiological confirmation, which may lead to ...late or misdiagnosis. The use of slit skin smears is variable, but lacks sensitivity. In 2017-2018 during the ComLep study, on the island of Anjouan (Union of the Comoros; High priority country according to WHO, 310 patients were diagnosed with leprosy (paucibacillary = 159; multibacillary = 151), of whom 263 were sampled for a skin biopsy and fingerstick blood, and 260 for a minimally-invasive nasal swab. In 74.5% of all skin biopsies and in 15.4% of all nasal swabs, M. leprae DNA was detected. In 63.1% of fingerstick blood samples, M. leprae specific antibodies were detected with the quantitative αPGL-I test. Results show a strong correlation of αPGL-I IgM levels in fingerstick blood and RLEP-qPCR positivity of nasal swabs, with the M. leprae bacterial load measured by RLEP-qPCR of skin biopsies. Patients with a high bacterial load (≥50,000 bacilli in a skin biopsy) can be identified with combination of counting lesions and the αPGL-I test. To our knowledge, this is the first study that compared αPGL-I IgM levels in fingerstick blood with the bacterial load determined by RLEP-qPCR in skin biopsies of leprosy patients. The demonstrated potential of minimally invasive sampling such as fingerstick blood samples to identify high bacterial load persons likely to be accountable for the ongoing transmission, merits further evaluation in follow-up studies.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
A customized app in Open Data Kit (ODK) was used for data collection. Besides sociodemographic and clinical data, the app allows recording the geographic coordinates of the household and scanning the ...barcodes and entering screening results for each individual. Additional approval for publication was obtained from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM), Antwerp (Approval number: 1541/21). ...30 new leprosy cases were identified among the self-presenting neighborhood contacts as well as 6 additional new cases among their household contacts (Fig 1). In such high prevalence zones, even repeated (e.g., annual or biannual) door-to-door screening could be considered until clear signs of decline are demonstrated (e.g., until no more children are found among newly diagnosed leprosy cases). Since household contacts clearly are at extremely high risk, postexposure prophylaxis is strongly recommended 9.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
To identify pre-operative radiological parameters that are able to predict the functional outcomes of open partial horizontal laryngectomy (OPHL).
The present retrospective study concerned a cohort ...of 96 patients with laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma who underwent pre-operative radiological staging with contrast-enhanced computerised tomography of the neck, and subsequent supracricoid or supratracheal laryngectomy. Univariate and multivariate analyses were run to assess the prognostic value of the main demographic and surgical variables, and the pre-operative cephalometric values, respectively, in terms of predicting patients' functional outcomes.
Multivariate analysis showed that a larger anteroposterior cross-sectional dimension of the aero-digestive tract in the mid-retroglossal area, and a greater distance between the genial tubercle and the hyoid bone in the mid-sagittal plane correlated significantly with better functional outcomes in terms of decannulation rate at discharge.
Our findings show that larger pre-operative upper aero-digestive tract diameters and volumes coincide with better post-operative functional outcomes after OPHL.
Post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) using single-dose rifampicin reduces progression from infection with Mycobacterium leprae to leprosy disease. We compared effectiveness of different administration ...modalities, using a higher (20 mg/kg) dose of rifampicin—single double-dose rifampicin (SDDR)-PEP.
We did a cluster randomised study in 16 villages in Madagascar and 48 villages in Comoros. Villages were randomly assigned to four study arms and inhabitants were screened once a year for leprosy, for 4 consecutive years. All permanent residents (no age restriction) were eligible to participate and all identified patients with leprosy were treated with multidrug therapy (SDDR-PEP was provided to asymptomatic contacts aged ≥2 years). Arm 1 was the comparator arm, in which no PEP was provided. In arm 2, SDDR-PEP was provided to household contacts of patients with leprosy, whereas arm 3 extended SDDR-PEP to anyone living within 100 m. In arm 4, SDDR-PEP was offered to household contacts and to anyone living within 100 m and testing positive to anti-phenolic glycolipid-I. The main outcome was the incidence rate ratio (IRR) of leprosy between the comparator arm and each of the intervention arms. We also assessed the individual protective effect of SDDR-PEP and explored spatial associations. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03662022, and is completed.
Between Jan 11, 2019, and Jan 16, 2023, we enrolled 109 436 individuals, of whom 95 762 had evaluable follow-up data. Our primary analysis showed a non-significant reduction in leprosy incidence in arm 2 (IRR 0·95), arm 3 (IRR 0·80), and arm 4 (IRR 0·58). After controlling for baseline prevalence, the reduction in arm 3 became stronger and significant (IRR 0·56, p=0·0030). At an individual level SDDR-PEP was also protective with an IRR of 0·55 (p=0·0050). Risk of leprosy was two to four times higher for those living within 75 m of an index patient at baseline.
SDDR-PEP appears to protect against leprosy but less than anticipated. Strong spatial associations were observed within 75 m of index patients. Targeted door-to-door screening around index patients complemented by a blanket SDDR-PEP approach will probably have a substantial effect on transmission.
European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership.
For the French translation of the abstract see Supplementary Materials section.
The World Health Organization (WHO) endorsed diagnosis of leprosy (also known as Hansen’s disease) entirely based on clinical cardinal signs, without microbiological confirmation, which may lead to ...late or misdiagnosis. The use of slit skin smears is variable, but lacks sensitivity. In 2017–2018 during the ComLep study, on the island of Anjouan (Union of the Comoros; High priority country according to WHO, 310 patients were diagnosed with leprosy (paucibacillary = 159; multibacillary = 151), of whom 263 were sampled for a skin biopsy and fingerstick blood, and 260 for a minimally-invasive nasal swab. In 74.5% of all skin biopsies and in 15.4% of all nasal swabs, M. leprae DNA was detected. In 63.1% of fingerstick blood samples, M. leprae specific antibodies were detected with the quantitative αPGL-I test. Results show a strong correlation of αPGL-I IgM levels in fingerstick blood and RLEP-qPCR positivity of nasal swabs, with the M. leprae bacterial load measured by RLEP-qPCR of skin biopsies. Patients with a high bacterial load (≥50,000 bacilli in a skin biopsy) can be identified with combination of counting lesions and the αPGL-I test. To our knowledge, this is the first study that compared αPGL-I IgM levels in fingerstick blood with the bacterial load determined by RLEP-qPCR in skin biopsies of leprosy patients. The demonstrated potential of minimally invasive sampling such as fingerstick blood samples to identify high bacterial load persons likely to be accountable for the ongoing transmission, merits further evaluation in follow-up studies. Author summary Leprosy is the oldest infectious disease known to humankind. We still do not succeed in curbing its transmission, with more than 200,000 new patients detected worldwide each year. Identifying persons with a high burden of bacteria is key to curb transmission. To identify these persons, bacteria are counted in invasive and painful samples like slit skin smears and skin biopsies. We evaluated whether we can use less invasive samples, like fingerstick blood or nasal swabs, to determine the bacterial load. We found that the level of antibodies against M. leprae (αPGL-I IgM) in fingerstick blood correlates well with the bacterial load determined in skin biopsies from the same leprosy patient. Therefore, a high level of antibodies against M. leprae in fingerstick blood might identify persons who pose a potential risk for transmission of leprosy and could be prioritized for contact screening, which is essential for control of the disease.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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