Serum cations (calcium and magnesium) in leprosy.

Serum cations (calcium and magnesium) were studied in 80 leprosy patients and 40 normal healthy individuals to find out the correlation between the clinical status of leprosy with these cations levels in the serum. There was significant decrease of serum calcium in lepromatous leprosy (7.42 +/- 0.7 mg%, t = 14.12, P less than 0.001), which seems to be related with the extent of leprosy lesions and duration of illness as few patients (22.2%) with minimal lesions and shorter duration of illness had serum calcium within normal range. Serum magnesium was significantly decreased in all types of leprosy cases and lepromatous leprosy patients showed highly significant decrease in serum magnesium level (1.02 +/- 0.2 mEq/L, t = 14.54, P less than 0.001).