Evaluation of cardiac autonomic status using QTc interval in patients with leprosy

Most of studies on leprosy mainly focus on its somatic symptoms. There are few reports on evaluation of cardiac autonomic status by QTc interval. We performed a cross-sectional, case-control study to investigate the QTc (QT corrected for heart rate) interval difference between leprosy patients and healthy controls. Thirty leprosy patients and 30 age- and sex-matched healthy controls were included in this study. These leprosy patients, aged 41 years on average, suffered from leprosy for an average of 4 years. 55% of these patients had more than 10 skin patches, 66% of them had somatic neuropathy, and 33% of them had cardiac autonomic neuropathy. Electrocardiogram recording from lead II showed that QTc interval was significantly longer in patients with leprosy than in healthy controls (OR: 6, 95% CI: 1.17-30.72, P = 0.03). QTc interval was unrelated to age and duration of disease and it would not be influenced by the type of neuropathies and skin symptoms. QTc results revealed that patients with leprosy had a significantly higher risk for cardiac autonomic neuropathy than healthy controls.