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Lucio's phenomenon is an unusual reaction seen almost exclusively in patients from the Caribbean and Mexico with diffuse lepromatous leprosy, especially in untreated cases. It is characterised by recurrent crops of large, sharply demarcated, ulcerative lesions, affecting mainly the lower extremities, but may generalise and become fatal as a result of secondary bacterial infection and sepsis.
Lucio's phenomenon was first described by Rafael Lucio Nájera and Alvarado as a necrotizing skin reaction associated with non-nodular diffuse leprosy in 1852. This reaction was later named by Latapi and Zamora in 1948 as Lucio's phenomenon after identification of histopathological changes involving multiple, acute and necrotizing cutaneous vasculitis peculiar to pure and primitive diffuse leprosy.