The effectiveness of the combination of rifampicin, clofazimine and dapzone in the treatment of leprosy

Abstract

This review considered studies that evaluated patients with leprosy and compared multidrug therapy to alternative treatments. PubMed, Scopus and Cochrane Libary databases were used to search for scientific studies. A manual search was also done. Eight studies published between 2000 and 2018 were included, referring to patients from Brazil, India, Hong Kong and Vietnam. Only one study selected is a systematic review followed by meta-analysis, four studies are observational studies and three are randomized studies. The systematic review identified 206 records, after removing duplicates, 194 were considered irrelevant during screening, and 4 were excluded after reading the texts in full. No studies were identified by manual search. The assessment of risk of bias in randomized clinical trials was conducted using the risk of bias criteria suggested by RoB 2.0. Risk of bias assessment of systematic reviews followed by meta-analyses was conducted using the ROBIS tool. And, for single-arm studies, critical evaluation was performed using the Joanna Briggs Institute tool. The articles included evaluated effectiveness, adverse events and recurrence that configure the multidrug regimen versus monotherapy. This review suggests that, in order to assess the real effectiveness of the treatment, it is necessary to use technologies to measure adherence, with active monitoring of these patients.