Larvae, leeches, and bees bridge the millennia
May 1, 1999 2 minutes read
Larvae, leeches, and bees bridge the millennia
"Bridging the Millennia," a two-day conference on the use of living organisms in medicine, will be held on June 10-11 at the Grand Pavilion, Porthcawl, South Wales, UK. The conference will consider the use of sterile larvae (maggots), leeches, and bee products in wound management. The program will contain presentations of recent scientific developments in all techniques and illustrate the use of these powerful therapies in clinical practice.
Steven Thomas, MD, director of Surgical Materials Testing Laboratory at Princess of Wales Hospital in Brigend, UK, says his Biosurgical Research Unit (BRU) is the only supplier of sterile maggots in the UK. "We supply maggots to about 500 centers in the UK," Thomas says. "We’ve supplied just under 5,000 treatments so far, which took in excess of a million maggots." BRU has a proprietary process for sterilizing maggot eggs. Maggots that hatch out of these eggs are bacteria-free.
Maggots are used in wound care to debride dead tissue and combat infection. Thomas says maggots combat infection in three ways: They ingest and kill bacteria; they raise the wound’s pH to about 8.5, which makes it difficult for organisms like staphylococci and streptococci to grow; and they may produce natural antibiotic-like materials that have an antimicrobial effect on the wound. These materials have not yet been isolated or identified. "Work was done some years ago in which maggots were washed with saline solution, and the washings injected into mice which were then exposed to infection," Thomas says. "The mice that received washings survived; the others didn’t. Maggots have been shown to kill bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus."
The conference will include presentations on larval therapy and the diabetic foot, larvae in plastic surgery, and clinical applications of leeches, which are used in biosurgery to restore venous return to areas that have become venous-congested, as when a severed finger is sewn back on a hand. The healing properties of honey and a report on the work of the apitherapy commission are also on the agenda. (For a discussion of honey as an antibacterial, see Wound Care, January 1999, p. 10.)
The two-day conference costs £180 (about $295). For reservations, contact Tony Fowler at the Biosurgical Research Unit. Telephone: +44-1656-752820. Fax: +44-1656-752830. E-mail: [email protected]. A draft of the conference program is available at www.smtl.co.uk/WMPRC/BioSurgery/Conference/prog99.html.
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