Introduction: The World Health Organization field leprosy classification is based on the number of skin lesions: paucibacillary leprosy (1-5 skin lesions), and multibacillary leprosy (more than 5 skin lesions). Worldwide, about 250,000 new cases of leprosy are reported each year, and about 2 million people have leprosy-related disabilities.
Methods and outcomes: We conducted a systematic review and aimed to answer the following clinical questions: What are the effects of interventions to prevent leprosy? What are the effects of treatments for leprosy? We searched: Medline, Embase, The Cochrane Library, and other important databases up to September 2009 (Clinical Evidence reviews are updated periodically, please check our website for the most up-to-date version of this review). We included harms alerts from relevant organisations such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
Results: We found 20 systematic reviews, RCTs, or observational studies that met our inclusion criteria. We performed a GRADE evaluation of the quality of evidence for interventions.
Conclusions: In this systematic review we present information relating to the effectiveness and safety of the following interventions: chemoprophylaxis with single-dose rifampicin, Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) plus killed Mycobacterium leprae vaccine, BCG vaccine, ICRC vaccine, multidrug treatment, multiple-dose treatment, Mycobacterium w vaccine, and single-dose treatment.