What is leprosy?
Albinism, a group of inherited sexual recessive disorders characterized by a lack or lack of melanin production. The type and amount of melanin produced by the body determines the color of the skin, hair, and eyes, and the thinness makes the leprosy more susceptible to radiation exposure Sun, and increase the risk of skin cancer.
People with this disorder can take steps to protect their skin and maximize vision, because there is no cure for leprosy. The disease affects one in every seventeen thousand people in the world, and the gene carries one of every seventy people in the world.
Causes of leprosy
The most common mutations are the mutation that interferes with the production of tyrosine (tyrosine 3-monoxiginase), which synthesizes melanin by merging tyrosine and amino acids .
Depending on the type of mutation, melanin production can slow down, produce little or stop completely, and regardless of the amount of melanin production and its effect on skin color, there are always problems associated with vision. These problems occur because melanin plays a key role in building the retina and nerve pathways From the eye to the brain.
Parent-to-child transmission is transmitted if the parents have the leprosy gene, but the child can carry the gene without the infection. When both parents carry the gene, there is a 25% chance that the child will be born with leprosy.
Symptoms of leprosy
The symptoms of the disease are divided into four main sections:
- Skin problems : The problems that appear to be more pronounced in people with this disease, where the skin color of the patient is white, and the degree of color according to the degree of infection, and the aging and exposure to sunlight may increase the levels of melanin in the skin, and may lead to the emergence of freckles and moles in patients Leprosy.
- Hair : As with the skin, the color of the hair can turn white or brown, and people of African or Asian origin may turn their hair color to yellow or brownish red, and with age may darken the color of hair slowly.
- eye color : It can change with age and turns from very light blue to brown, and low levels of melanin makes the iris look slightly translucent, or appear red or rosy due to light reflection of the retina in the back of the eye, and this decrease also reduces its ability The iris blocks the entire sun, causing light sensitivity (light phobia).
- Vision : There are signs and symptoms of leprosy related to eye function, and include the following:
- Nystagmus: A rapid, involuntary eye movement back and forth.
- Spleen: Defect in both eyes makes each in a different direction.
- Acute myopia or postopia.
- Abnormal curvature of the front surface of the eye or the lens of the eye (astigmatism), causing blurred vision.
Types of leprosy
The disease is generally divided into two types: the OCD, which includes the reduction of pigment in the eyes, hair and skin, four of which are classified according to the type of genetic mutations. The second type is called optic leprosy, which mainly involves a defect in the eyes, while the skin and hair appear in a normal color.
Treatment of leprosy
The aim of the treatment is to alleviate the symptoms that depend on the severity of the disease, and the treatment involves protection of skin and eye protection from the sun mainly, and these are some of the treatments used for leprosy patients:
- Appropriate care for eye problems is essential, including eyeglasses, dark glasses to protect the eyes from the sun and regular eye examinations. Sunscreen is also recommended as well as full skin coverage when exposed to sun for a long time.
- Eye surgeries, sometimes these processes enable the muscles to reduce the nystagmus of the eye, reduce the intensity of the strabismus, making the appearance more beautiful, but surgery does not improve vision. The success rate of these processes varies from person to person.
Problems of Leprosy
Sun protection is essential to prevent any skin burns or malignant skin tumors, including basal cell carcinoma, squamous cells, and malignant melanoma, which affect the patient’s life. This is especially important in Africa where the sun is very strong.
It should be noted that leprosy may cause social and psychological problems for the patient, because the leprosy patients appear to be different from their families and peers and other members of society. In some parts of Africa this disease is linked to social stigma or myths and myths, so the patient must be psychologically supported and not subjected to these psychological stresses.
Diseases associated with leprosy
There are two types of systemic diseases that are rarely associated with patients with leprosy. The first is the Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome, a type of leprosy that has problems with bleeding, bruising, lung cancer and bowel disease. Of the other types of leprosy.
The second is Chédiak-Higashi syndrome, a rare disorder that affects multiple systems of the body characterized by the body’s susceptibility to infection, anemia and liver hyperplasia.