Leprosy in an Eight-Year-Old Child - An Exceptional Case with Unusual Oral Manifestation.

Leprosy is a contagious and granulomatous disease which is caused by Mycobacterium leprae. The incubation period for leprosy is five to seven years and it can take as long as about 30 years before signs and symptoms of leprosy develop in some patients. It is a chronic systemic disease which mostly affects the skin and peripheral nerves. It has been seen that indeterminate leprosy is the most common type seen in childhood followed by tuberculoid variant. Borderline lepromatous and lepromatous leprosy are only occasionally encountered in children and rarely affects the oral cavity. Here, we report a rare case of an eight-year-old female child patient who presented primarily with oral manifestations and was subsequently diagnosed as having lepromatous leprosy.