Breakthrough in leprosy

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34048, 12 January 1976, Page 12

Breakthrough in leprosy

(N.Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND. The germ of leprosy has at last been grown in the laboratory—more than 100 years after it was first identified. This breakthrough brings new hope for the world’s 15m lepers. It also brings relief to the many more millions at risk through years of contact with "open” cases which have not been treated. The century-old mystery of how the germ grows was solved by a Leprosy Mission research team supported by the American wing of the mission and under the leadership of Dr Olaf, Skinsns in Hawaii, where Dr Skinsns is professor of pathology at the University of Hawaii and has been associated with the Leprosy Mission and reseach into leprosy for many years. The significance of this advance is that now new drugs can be tested quickly and cheaply without risk to human beings; they can now be tried out on laboratory cultures and germs.

For many years human beings had to be the volunteer guinea pigs in all leprosy research, and this was slow, risky, and unsatisfactory in other ways.

In recent years a strain of white mice, Syrian hamsters, and then armadillos have proved of some use as laboratory animals. But none were really satisfactory. But, more important still, the culturing of germs might well lead to the development of a preventive vaccine which so far has been impossible. This has meant that leprosy could be cured, but nothing could be done to prevent millions more cases from developing. In making this announcement, the secretary of the New Zealand branch of the Leprosy Mission (the Rev. R. A. Alcorn, of Auckland) said that this appeared to be the greatest victory in the war of mankind against leprosy since the disease was found to be treatable. He said that if a vaccine were developed, the mission and other leprosy workers would be faced with the colossal challenge of immunising the millions of people who had been in contact with untreated cases. Then, they would have to face the problem of making immunisation available to whole populations in the countries where leprosy was rife.

This would make practicable the achievement of one of the mission’s longcherished objectives, wiping out leprosy altogether.