Adenosine deaminase activity in leprosy.

Serum adenosine deaminase (ADA) was studied in 60 patients of different types of leprosy and 50 healthy control subjects. ADA levels in patients with tuberculoid (50.50 +/- 5.22 U/L), borderline (41.14 +/- 3.89 U/L) and lepromatous leprosy (30.10 +/- .03 U/L) were higher than that in controls (17.84 +/- 2.78 U/L), thus correlating with the immunological status of patients. Patients with lepra reaction showed decreased ADA levels and higher grade of lepromin test positivity was associated with increased ADA activity.

Gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase in leprosy.

Activity of the enzyme-gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (GGTP) was measured in sera of 20 patients each of paucibacillary and multibacillary leprosy and 20 healthy controls. None of the subjects had any systemic or hepatic disease and none had taken any hepatotoxic or antileprotic drugs in the past 3 months. Mean values in the paucibacillary group (38.62 +/- 1.99 U/L) and in the multibacillary group (59.04 +/- 3.13 U/L) were significantly higher compared to that in controls (32.04 +/- 0.66 U/L). Mean value in the multibacillary group was also significantly higher compared to that in the paucibacillary group.

Lymphocyte arginase activity in leprosy--a preliminary report.

Arginase activity was estimated in serum and lymphocytes of 22 healthy controls and 50 untreated leprosy patients across the spectrum. The patients included 21 lepromatous/borderline lepromatous (LL/BL); 20 borderline borderline/borderline tuberculoid (BB/BT) and 9 tuberculoid (TT) cases. Mean serum arginase levels were 1.51 +/- 0.43, 1.41 +/- 0.43, 1.24 +/- 0.43 and 1.10 +/- 0.026 mu moles/min/ml in LL/BL, BB/BT and TT patients and healthy controls respectively. The lymphocyte arginase activity showed a similar increasing trend from TT to LL/BL. The mean lymphocyte arginase levels were 0.87 +/- 0.31 mu moles/min/10(6) cells in healthy controls and 1.81 +/- 0.40, 2.54 +/- 0.60 and 5.48 +/- 0.56 mu moles/min/10(6) cells in TT, BB/BT and LL/BL patients respectively. The increasing trend specially in lymphocyte arginase levels across the spectrum of leprosy correlated with the degree of impairment in the protective cell mediated immune response and also the extent of disease. The role of these pathophysiological alterations in relation to defect in immune response calls for investigation.

Adenosine deaminase activity in leprosy (a preliminary study).

Adenosine deaminase (ADA) activity was studied in 25 patients having different types of leprosy and 25 healthy volunteer as control. There was definite rise of ADA activity in BL (72.9 +/- 6.85), LL (56.7 +/- 3.35) and BT (39.1 +/- 8.28) which was statistically significant when compared to ADA activity in healthy control (9.7 +/- 0.53).