Is a centuries-old disease endemic in Florida? What to know about the spread of leprosy

MIAMI — Leprosy, a disease of the skin and nerves, hearkens back centuries, all the way to its reference in the Bible in the Book of Leviticus.

People in Florida are talking about leprosy again — and not just in church or Sunday school.

While leprosy remains rare in the U.S., more cases are popping up across the country, including in Florida, where the disease may have become endemic, experts say. A disease is considered endemic when it is consistently present in a place. A pandemic, like COVID, can spread far and quickly.

Even though most people have natural immunity against the ancient bacteria that causes leprosy, thousands across the world get ill with the disease every year. And in the U.S., which sees about 150 cases a year, infections in the southeastern U.S. have more than doubled in the last decade, according to research published last year in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Emerging Infectious Diseases peer-reviewed journal.

The report was written by Central Florida doctors Aashni Bhukhan, Charles Dunn and Rajiv Nathoo.

But there is a cautionary tale at work here.

“The ultimate message for the general public, is do not panic,” Dunn, chief resident of the ADCS Orlando Dermatology Residency Program, said in a telephone interview with the Miami Herald. “This is a very rare disease process that is still very uncommon in the United States and something that is highly treatable if caught early, and not something that people need to be anxious or nervous about. It’s actually incredibly hard to contract — 95% of the population is genetically not susceptible to contracting it.”

The study, he said, was primarily aimed at educating the clinical community given the strong geographic predilection for leprosy. There’s still much to be learned about leprosy and why it is endemic in some states and wholly absent in others.

The bacteria that fuels the disease is slow growing and can take 5 to 20 years for symptoms to appear, which can make it slip under the radar in routine medical visits, Dunn said.

“There’s some misconceptions within the clinical community about how it’s contracted and how it’s transmitted,” he said.

...continued

swipe to next page