Maggot cure

Maggots are being used to help successfully treat MRSA patients in record time, according to a new study by the University of Manchester.

Researchers used green bottle fly larvae to treat 13 diabetics whose foot ulcers were contaminated with MRSA.

They found that all but one were cured within a mean period of three weeks, instead of the usual 28 weeks for conventional treatment.

Professor Andrew Boulton, who led the study, said: “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.”

The results were published in medical journal Diabetes Care and have won the research group a £98,000 grant from Diabetes UK to carry out a randomised controlled trial.