Dreaded Disease of the Middle Ages Diagnosed in Neighboring Country

After more than half a century, leprosy has reappeared near Hungary, as a patient was recently diagnosed in neighboring Austria, presumably arriving from an endemic area, reports vaol.hu.

According to the report, the man said he first started showing symptoms a year and a half ago, with mild paralysis of the feet, but thought it would go away on its own. The numbness got worse over time, spreading from his ankles and knees to his elbows and hands. The man saw several doctors, but for a long time they could not find out what was behind his symptoms. He finally found out in April that he had leprosy after a phone call to a doctor friend in Berlin.

Although the disease is extremely rare, the case is a warning sign that leprosy, the dreaded disease of the Middle Ages, has not disappeared for good.

Travel, migration, and global mobility can bring rare infections back, especially if the health system fails to recognize symptoms in time.

Leprosy was present in Hungary for centuries, with leper colonies in Buda, Szeged, Eger and other big cities at the time. The last documented cases in Hungary were recorded in the 1950s, and since then there have been no known active cases.

It is important to note that

leprosy is not highly contagious and can now be cured with multidrug therapy.

For someone to catch the disease, extensive physical contact is required. This means that infected people can live with their family and go to school or work without transmitting the disease. Symptoms of leprosy usually appear within a year, but for some people it can take 20 years or more before the first symptoms appear.

Symptoms of leprosy are:

• painless bright or red patches on the skin
• numbness, loss of sensation
• muscle weakness, paralysis
• eye damage, blindness
• in advanced cases, deformity of limbs.

Via vaol.hu, Featured image: Pixabay