Histopathological study of apparently normal skin of patients with leprosy

Abstract

Our findings underscore that the incidence of microscopical affection of normal-looking skin in leprosy is much higher on the lepromatous end of the spectrum of leprosy than on the tuberculoid end; during treatment, the leprosy granulomas may disappear from the normal skin before the clinical lesions. Moreover, the microscopic picture of indeterminate leprosy can be observed in the normal-looking skin of patients with tuberculoid leprosy or lepromatous leprosy, and this description appears not to be confined to the entity known as indeterminate leprosy.