Figure 4.

The MBT ALGO score reflects disease severity and bacterial load

The ALGO score is based on an algorithm that contributes higher weights to R values associated with disease (Figure 1B). Based on the median R value of the patient group, for each biomarker, R values were classified as strongly, intermediately, or not associated with disease. The ALGO score was set as 2× the number of strong biomarkers (2× n_strong), plus the number of intermediate biomarkers (n_intermediate), minus the number of biomarkers not associated with disease (n_not) ((2∗nbiomarker^strong + nbiomarker^intermediate)-nbiomarker^not).

(A) ALGO scores observed in the Bangladeshi and South Korean cohorts per test group. Patients with untreated multibacillary (MB) leprosy (orange), patients with untreated paucibacillary (PB) leprosy (blue), household contacts (HCs; green), patients with other dermatological diseases (ODDs; gray), and healthy controls ((E) C; white) are represented.

(B) The percentage of individuals per test group with ALGO scores ranging from −5 to −1 (gray), from 0 to 4 (green), or ALGO scores ≥ 5 (blue) for the Bangladeshi plasma (left) and South Korean serum (right) cohort.