Dear Dr. Barve,
Thank you very much for your comments regarding our paper “Clinical trial for uniform multidrug therapy for leprosy patients in Brazil (U-MDT/CT-BR): adverse effects approach”.1
Let us clarify some points:
- 1.
Indeed, both pigmentation and xerosis are caused by clofazimine. We definitely did not imply that these were due to rifampicin and/or dapsone.
- 2.
It is clear that paucibacillary (PB) patients treated with R-MDT do not use clofazimine. However, as mentioned in reference 2, the inclusion of clofazimine in the treatment of PB patients did not lead to an increase in non-compliance when we used U-MDT.2
- 3.
Definitely, we cannot compare data from leprosy control programs with a randomized and controlled clinical trial.3 It would be a fundamental and serious mistake. However, it is very important to stress that only 24 patients had to interrupt treatment due to adverse effects (AE).1
- 4.
Despite your question about the moment of AE onset, for us it is clear and elementary that the shorter the treatment is, the less AE we are likely to find.
Study conducted at the Centro de Dermatologia Dona Libânia and Fundação de Dermatologia Tropical e Venereologia “Alfredo da Matta,” Manaus (AM), Brazil.
Financial support: Department of Science and Technology (DECIT), Ministry of Health CNPq, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, Brasília, DF, Brazil.
Conflict of interest: None.
