| Little Scavengers Revolutionising The World of Medicine Once Again | 12/07/2015 |
It was 12th May 1917 in the French Rethel, when an American doctor had made an extraordinary discovery. As the Germans were wreaking havoc during the First World War, dr William Stevenson Boer was attending to soldiers with deep wounds, which to his amazement, hadn’t had developed any signs of infection, even though their wounds haven’t been treated for weeks. It turns out that in place of expected pus and swelling, Boer found perfectly clean cuts, sterilised by… maggots. Since then, insects have been widely used until WWII, when Fleming discovered penicillin. However, as antibiotics are becoming less and less useful due to bacteria becoming more resistant to them, scientists have started using maggots again.
A 48 year old patient, Linda Wegemann, was suffering from diabetes when the nerves of her foot became badly damaged due to the advancement of her disease. Her fear of having her leg amputated has led her to surgeon Wim Fleischmann, who has developed a new method of healing wounds through the use of Biobags. These dressings are in the form of a tea bag, where the larvae are surrounded by a thin membrane through which they release their enzymes, which are involved in the healing process. The membrane acts as a discomfort reducer, to stop patients from having to witness the distasteful action of maggots rummaging through their wound. “Larvae are sometimes the last resort. Thanks to this method, 50% of future amputations due to infection can be prevented.”, explains dr Tomasz Skalski, chairman of the Biomantis corporation which produces Biobags.
Now how do maggots actually heal ? The saliva and the digestive system of the maggots contain over 1200 proteins – including enzymes- which decompose dead tissue. Maggots are great for use on humans as they can only stay on the surface of the wound, as if they were to crawl into the tissue they would end up suffocating themselves. They have also evolved antimicrobial properties as they contain antimicrobial peptides which surround the membrane of bacteria impenetrable by antibiotics. This makes them perfect to use. Between 50% to 80% of biosurgery ( using Biobags as nicknamed by Fleischmann) is successful. The larvae are usually grown on horse blood in a Petri dish and they are then sent by post to labs all over the world where they are sterilised for biosurgery. “ Biosurgery is 10 times more cheaper than traditional therapy and only lasts from two to 8 weeks, as opposed to months or years”, says dr Skalski. Images courtesy of : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3048269/bin/11999_2010_1415_Fig1_HTML.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BOFVdKXCAAE7gJ-.png
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