Clinical trial of DADDS in lepromatous leprosy

This presentation reports the results of a short clinical trial with DADDS in 23 patients of lepromatous leprosy. Injections of DADDS administered intramuscularly in a dose of 225 mg every 70 days produced clinical regression noticeable earliest at few week after the secondn injection. A fall in the morphological index from 5.0 to 0.6 was observed in patients who had received from 3 to 7 injections. Erythema nodosum leprosum was encountered in 7 cases, four of which had moderate to severe grades of reaction. It is advisible to discontinue further injection of DADDS if initial signs of ENL are noticed, which are likely to occur after the second injection. These ENL responded well to the usual line of antireaction treatment. DDS level in blood was found to be more than 10 ng/ml before the fresh administration of DADDS upto the seventh injection, representing the period of follow-up in this study.