Genética e Hanseníase: uma percepção crítica de sua conceituação e evolução

• Autor(a) principal: GONÇALVES, AGUINALDO
• Data de Publicação: 1977
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Hansenologia Internationalis (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.saude.sp.gov.br/hansenologia/article/view/36066
• topic: Genética; Hanseníase; Grupos sangüíneos; Antígeno Austrália; Lisozima; dermatóglifos; Genetics; Hanseniasis; Blood groups; Australia antigen; Lisozyme; Dermatoglyphs

In previous scientific papers, application of Genetics methodology to some human diseases has been reviewed. In this paper, the same is tried for hanseniasis. At first, controversies about the infectious or hereditary nature of the disease are discussed, since the polarization when it was defined last century, and through the successive improvements of knowledge about this interesting and fascinating problem, during the last decades. Next, some scientifically consistent discoveries are reviewed, mainly about familial environment, conjugal hanseniasis, twin affection, action of lisozyme and genetic markers, v.g., blood groups,' dermatoglyphs, seric enzymatic polimorphisms and Au antigen. Such information lead to a critical perception indicating that the two basic positions about the nosography of the disease must be redimensioned after a factual multicausality in natural history of the disease, and that the positivist unicausalist optics of determination should be abandoned. Snowing this, and chiefly the mentioned anddiscussed evidences of genetic mechanisms in hanseniasis and the greater frequency of effectivetransmission of M. leprae than the frequency of newly diagnosed cases, the application of an usual mendelian population model is presented, as a possible theoretical basis of heredity of the disease.