Central Florida reported among the highest rates of leprosy in the US, according to a research letter published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. The region accounted for 81% of cases in Florida and nearly 1 out of 5 leprosy cases nationwide.
When a 54-year-old landscaper came into an Orlando dermatology clinic with a splotchy, painful rash, Dr. Rajiv Nathoo took five or six biopsies. The rash was spreading from the man’s limbs to his face, but previous doctors had been stumped by what was causing it. The biopsy results confirmed Nathoo’s hunch, a diagnosis he described as something “you read in your textbooks”: leprosy.
Instead, the people appear to have been infected locally, a finding that suggests that leprosy has become endemic in Florida, the letter says. Experts agree that leprosy is becoming endemic in the region. But that need not cause a public health panic, said Dr. Nicole Iovine, chief hospital epidemiologist at the University of Florida Health Shands Hospital. “Endemic” simply means there are regular levels of a disease in a region but not that rates are climbing, she explained.
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