Detecting the onset of leprosy before nerve damage occurs

Birmingham: New research could help improve the lives of thousands of leprosy sufferers worldwide by detecting the disease long before it manifests as skin lesions. Peripheral nerve damage is the hallmark of leprosy pathology, but its origins had remained unclear until now. Experts have been exploring the relationship between Mycobacterium leprae, a bacteria which causes leprosy, and the formation of the membrane attack complex (MAC), which is a tool deployed by the innate immune system to fight pathogens. MAC can damage adjacent health tissues and trigger inflammation at the early stages of the disease.

Ancient skeleton shows leprosy may have spread to Britain from Scandinavia

Leiden: Scientific studies of a 1500-year-old skeleton from England have revealed new insights into the early spread of leprosy. The skeleton comes from an archaeological excavation in Great Chesterford, Essex, eastern England. An international scientific team, led by Dr Sarah Inskip of Leiden University, and including researchers from Historic England, and the Universities of Birmingham, Southampton, Surrey, and Swansea examined the burial. The bones were of a man who was probably in his twenties when he died, sometime in the 5^th or 6^th centuries AD, and showed changes consistent with leprosy, suggesting that this was a very early British case of the disease.