The Promin treatment of leprosy : a progress report / by G.H. Faget [and others].

Date:
1943
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Promin treatment of leprosy : a progress report / by G.H. Faget [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    only 3 percent of cases the procedure proved entirély unsuccessful; the others are in the process of desensitization. Another manifestation is allergic rhinitis, which developed in one patient. After several months the sneezing episodes following each injection of promin ceased. Other untoward reactions, headaches and nausea, are generally mild and ephemeral. Nausea occurred in 35 percent of cases. It is tran- sitory in nature and can be prevented by injecting the drug more slowly. Vomiting followed nausea in only 7 percent of cases. It also responds to slower injection, up to 1 minute being required to ad- minister 5 gm. of promin intravenously. Several patients: complained of headaches, which were never severe. An increase in erythema of leprous plaques was noted in 3 percent of the cases. This accompanied th t few weeks of treatment and gradually subsided. Its cause is own. Acute leprae reactions with fever and the appearance of erythema nodosum occurs less frequently with promin than with most previous experimental treat- ments or than with the routine chaulmoogra oil injections. It was the cause of discontinuing promin therapy in only four cases. An exacerbation of an iridocyclitis occurred in 10 percent of cases. In all of them the patient had experienced frequent previous attacks of iridocyclitis. ‘This drug seems temporarily to increase the severity of the ocular inflammation, which is generally followed by improve- ment. Inonly one patient the exacerbation of iridocyclitis initiated by promin persisted longer than 1 month. A generalized lymphadenitis was another unusual toxic manifesta- tion which occurred in one patient. Reduction of the dose of promin to 1 gm. resulted in the subsidence of the glandular enlargement. CLINICAL MATERIAL No attempt was made to select minimal or moderately advanced cases with favorable prognosis. Thus only a few cases of neural and maculoanesthetic types are included in the study. All patients treated were bacterioscopically positive at onset and many had never had a negative bactériologic report during the entire previous period of hospitalization. Many patients volunteering for treatment had far advanced lepromatous and mixed types of leprosy with poor prognosis. The disease in the majority of cases was showing a definite trend toward aggravation before the institution of promin therapy. Several cases were selected because of certain complications which it was thought might be favorably influenced by the promin. Among these important complications were: Leprous keratitis and irido- cyclitis, with pending loss of vision in some cases; leprous rhinitis with ulcerations, repeated epistaxis and partial obstruction of nares;
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