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Hansen's disease, or leprosy, although a relatively uncommon disease in the United States, continues to be important because of its implications--physical, psychological, and social--for the patient. Prognosis and treatment of the disease are based largely on clinical classification, which ranges from the multibacillary "lepromatous" to the paucibacillary "tuberculoid" forms, depending on the patient's specific immune capabilities. Traditionally, skin testing with lepromins--suspensions of the etiologic agent of Hansen's disease, Mycobacterium leprae--have been used as adjuncts to clinical parameters for classification in endemic areas. However, these have not been systematically studied in the United States. This report describes the results obtained from skin testing 38 volunteers (22 patients and 16 uninfected persons) with standard lepromin preparations. These results support the adjunctive value of lepromins for clinically classifying Hansen's disease in our "hypoendemic" population.

An investigation was undertaken to determine if susceptibility and/or immune response to Mycobacterium tuberculosis was associated with histocompatible leukocyte antigen (HLA) phenotype frequencies of class I or II antigens. Comparisons of the HLA phenotypes of 51 Mexican-American patients with tuberculosis and 54 healthy subjects who differed in their skin-test reactivity to purified protein derivative (PPD) revealed that HLA-DR3 was significantly decreased in patients with tuberculosis, compared with healthy persons who were tuberculin skin-test positive. Although no association was observed between HLA phenotype and skin test reactivity to PPD in tuberculous patients, we did observe an increase in the HLA-A9-B40 phenotype in patients who manifested a strong in vitro proliferative response to PPD, whereas the HLA-B14-DR1 phenotype was increased in patients who exhibited a low proliferative response to this antigen.