Drugs Susceptibility Testing in Leprosy Patients from Côte d’Ivoire Reveals Multidrugs Resistance Combination Cases to Dapsone, Rifampicin and Ofloxacin

Leprosy is a chronic tropical infectious skin disease caused by an obligate intracellular pathogen called Mycobacterium leprae. Until now no vaccine was available so early diagnosis and treatment were the basic strategy for leprosy control. The treatment is based on combined drug therapy including Dapsone, Rifampicin, and Ofloxacin according protocols recommended by the WHO. However, anti-leprosy drugs resistance has been reported in several leprosy endemic region. The drug susceptibility testing was done by detecting mutation after sequencing of the drug resistance determining region. Cote d'Ivoire like many African countries has reaching the threshold of elimination of the disease and the PCT is available nationwide. On the basis of recurrences of therapeutic failures that could be due to misobservance of patients drug therapy or eventually due to circulating resistant strains, we evaluated the drug susceptibility in 155 patients from a leprosy care center in Cote d’Ivoire. Patients were previously diagnosed by clinicians and confirmed by PCR then the genetic drug susceptibility was done by PCR-direct sequencing of the drug resistance determining region of rifampicin, dapsone and ofloxacin used in the treatment. Our results showed multiple cases of multiresistance to anti-leprosy drugs in Cote d’Ivoire. This should be an alert for antibiotic resistance observatories, and policies so that more active surveillance was carried out for the control and surveillance of M. leprae resistance to drugs.