You are a helpful, respectful, and honest assistant. Always answer as helpfully as possible, while being safe. Your answers should not include any harmful, unethical, racist, sexist, toxic, dangerous, or illegal content. Please ensure that your responses are socially unbiased and positive in nature. If a question does not make any sense or is not factually coherent, explain why instead of answering something not correct. If you don't know the answer to a question, please don't share false information.
What is A patient with leprosy had slightly erythematous, anesthetic plaques on the trunk and upper limbs. He was treated with paucibacillary multidrug therapy (PB-MDT) for 6 months. At the end of 6 months, he had persistent erythema and induration in the plaque. The next step of action recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) in such a patient is and explain in detail?
Ans. is 'a' i.e., Stop antileprosy treatment o WHO recommends that "In paucibacillary leprosy, the multidrug therapy is stopped after 6 months of treatment regardless of the presence of clinically active disease". o According to Indian leprologists "The t/t with both Rifampicin and dapsone must be continued till all signs of activity have been subsided". o It is believed that these patients are viually always cleared of ble bacteria in 6 months with the WHO-MDT regime. o Therefore the attainment of clinical inactivity should not be the condition guiding the continuation of multidrug therapy in paucibacillary leprosy. o The lesions may be present but they will be cleared of all the organisms. o The clinical activity dos not correlate with bacterial multiplication. o Incidence of relapse in paucibacillary patients is very low and follow up studies in paucibacillary patients demonstrates that complete clearing of lesions takes 1-2 years after t/t discontinuation.