FDA approves Thalidomide for Hansen’s disease side effect, imposes unprecedented restrictions on distribution.
http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/ANSWERS/ANS00887.html

Redeeming thalidomide
http://pubs.acs.org/hotartcl/mdd/00/jun/mddkling.html

Remicade’s anti-TNF activity might also be useful for leprosy (a known mycobacterial disease), but there haven’t been any trials of remicade/infliximab for Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease), presumably because the manufacturers know that the average third-world leper can’t afford $30K+ a year to be maintained on remicade, and thus won’t spend the huge money necessary for the relevant clinical trials.

But Thalidomide, the poor man’s anti-TNF drug, is long out of patent, and is cheap, and so gets used for the poor lepers. But there is a fightback in the leprosy medical community, primarily because of the nasty birth defects that Thalidomide causes.

No Role for Thalidomide in Leprosy
http://www.paho.org/English/AD/DPC/CD/thalidomide.htm

Thalidomide has been trialled for Crohn’s Disease.

Thalidomide reduces tumour necrosis factor {alpha} and interleukin 12 production in patients with chronic active Crohn’s disease
http://gut.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/abstract/50/2/196

Thalidomide: New uses for notorious drug
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/thalidomide/HQ01507

So the relative success of treatment of Crohn’s Disease with Remicade is NOT an argument against a mycobacterial cause. In fact, if the Crohn’s Disease to Leprosy analogy that has been made by some researchers[2,3] is true, then Remicade treatment in Crohn’s could be an argument FOR a mycobacterial cause.

1. Steroid prophylaxis for prevention of nerve function impairment in leprosy: randomised placebo controlled trial.
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/abstract/328/7454/1459

2. Comparisons with leprosy, tuberculosis and Johne’s disease: is Crohn’s disease caused by a mycobacterium?
http://www.paratuberculosis.org/proc7/abst6_p6.htm

3. Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis in the causation of Crohn’s disease
http://www.wjgnet.com/1007-9327/6/630.asp