14 DAY TRIAL // With all the advanced techniques and technologies, in the end we have to go back to nature to find protection against superbugs, bacteria that have developed resistance against antibiotics. A team at the University of Manchester led by Professor Andrew Boulton has managed to eradicate in 13 diabetic patients the superbug MRSA using maggots that cleaned up their foot ulcers, all this on an average time of 3 weeks, much more rapidly than the 28-week term in common treatments.
"Maggots are the world's smallest surgeons. In fact they are better than surgeons - they are much cheaper and work 24 hours a day. They have been used since the Napoleonic Wars and in the American Civil War they found that those who survived were the ones with maggots in their wounds: they kept them clean. They remove the dead tissue and bacteria, leaving the healthy tissue to heal. Still, we were very surprised to see such a good result for MRSA. There is no reason this cannot be applied to many other areas of the body, except perhaps a large abdominal wound.", said Boulton.
Boulton's team has been employing maggots for treating diabetic foot ulcers at the Manchester Diabetes Centre and the Manchester Royal Infirmary since 1997. Recently, they discovered that many of the new cases of diabetic foot ulcer were contaminated with MRSA, with a double percentage in just 3 years, connected with the antibiotic overuse and the employment of too many antibiotic types at a time.
The 13 subjects with chronic foot ulcer, aged 18-80, experienced numbness and decreased blood supply. The team put onto their soaring wounds 2 to 8 times (for 4 days at a time) sterile free-range larvae of green bottle fly (Lucilia sericata), depending on the size of the ulcer. The maggots were protected by pressure relieving dressings, and the team did not use any antibiotic or growth factor. The maggots wiped out the wounds of MRSA.
No secondary undesired effects occurred, and the maggots ate the decaying necrotic tissue, making room for the healthy, regenerating tissue.
In a second research, the team is going to compare the maggot treatment with antibacterial silver dressings and the biogun treatment, employing ionized air to achieve superoxide radicals killing bacteria. "This is very exciting. We have demonstrated for the first time the potential of larval therapy to eliminate MRSA infection of diabetic foot ulcers. If confirmed in a randomized controlled trial, larval treatment would offer the first non-invasive and risk-free treatment of this increasing problem and a safe and cost-effective treatment in contrast to the expensive and potentially toxic antibiotic remedies.", Boulton added.