What is maggot therapy?
A fly can lay up to 300 eggs at a time, and its preferred place to lay them is a soft bed of rotting flesh. Maggots -- the larvae that emerge from these eggs -- feast on the tissue, using mouth hooks to scoop up the fluids oozing out of the decaying flesh. Meanwhile, they secrete enzymes that further break down dead tissue and stimulate cell regeneration.
Maggots are usually found on corpses, so why on Earth would a living person want these creepy crawlies on his or her skin?
In the United States alone, there are more than 23 million diabetics, and the disease kills a quarter of a million people every year [source: American Diabetes Association]. Over time, diabetes -- a disease that affects the ability of the pancreas to regulate blood sugar -- causes many health problems, including neuropathy, or damage to the nerves, which often occurs in the legs and feet. Also, blood vessels become hard and narrow, impeding circulation of oxygen-rich blood and nutrients to the feet. Untreated calluses on the feet of diabetics can develop into open sores known as ulcers. If these ulcers aren't treated promptly and effectively, they can become infections. In time, the infection can move to nearby bones.
Diabetics with circulation problems (especially smokers) have trouble healing ulcers on their feet. To treat diabetic foot ulcers, doctors must remove as much dead tissue around the sore as possible, boosting the body's ability to fight infection and heal the wound. If the condition worsens or infection spreads, the only recourse may be amputation of the toes, foot or even the lower leg. There are more than 70,000 toe, foot and leg amputations performed each year on diabetics in America [source: CDC]. It has been estimated that limb amputations related to diabetes occur every 30 seconds around the world [source: Reuters].
How do you heal the wound and avoid amputation? One ancient practice for cleaning open sores has been gaining new awareness among doctors and patients alike: maggot therapy.
Maggot therapy has been rediscovered over and over throughout the history of man. It's an easy discovery to make: Flies lay eggs on undressed wounds, and those eggs hatch within a day. Before the arrival of antibiotics, it became clear that injured people whose untreated wounds were infected with maggots healed quicker than those whose wounds were maggot-free.
So, can you pick up medicinal maggots at the corner drugstore? Read on to find out.
Launch Video One Step Beyond: Maggot TherapyOne Shipment of Medical Maggots, Coming Right Up
The modern application of maggot therapy shares the same concept with its historical predecessors, but features some nice upgrades like sanitation and medicine. After the sore is cleaned, live maggots are placed inside the wound and then covered with a bandage to keep them in place. They eat the dead flesh, which helps clean the wound. They also eliminate bacteria, leaving nice, clean, living flesh behind. And their presence -- and helpful gnawing -- inside the wound spurs cell regeneration and healing. In a few days' time, the maggots and the bandage are changed and replaced. The patient also takes antibiotics throughout treatment. After 10 or so treatments (depending on the severity of the wound), the troublesome dead tissue will be gone, and the extra help will allow the body to heal the wound.
No patient could be faulted for requesting a heavy sedative before the procedure. Often, the patient's discomfort is limited to a severe case of the heebie-jeebies, but sometimes the therapy can be painful, especially in the first few treatments. What causes the pain? Maggots get fat from eating you, and it creates pressure in the wound.
There are many different types of fly (and thus, maggot), and not just any will do. The most commonly used larvae come from the green blowfly (Phaenicia sericata). Maggots used for treatment are grown disease-free and shipped in sterile, disinfected conditions from special laboratories. But medicinal maggots aren't over-the-counter, so save yourself an awkward conversation with a store clerk: A prescription needs to be presented to the lab before shipment. This can be potentially problematic, since few doctors have experience with maggot therapy. Because of this, if you are facing a scenario in which maggot therapy is the only option remaining before amputation, you may need to bring it up and direct your doctor to pursue this remaining treatment option, or find a doctor who will.
Of course, you could apply them yourself (once you have prescription and maggots in hand), but you would need the know-how -- and a strong stomach. You can't just go slathering maggots on your open wounds. Even though they don't normally eat living tissue, maggots will consume healthy flesh if there is overpopulation. Generally, there should be no more than eight maggots per square centimeter of surface in the treatment area [source: Brownstein].
Besides diabetes, what other conditions might call for maggot therapy?
Maggot Therapy: For When Conventional Therapies Fail
As gross as it sounds, maggot therapy has benefited as many as 10,000 people around the world annually and has saved many people from having their feet amputated [source: BTER Foundation]. It can be used to treat the following:
- pressure ulcers
- venous stasis ulcers
- neuropathic foot ulcers
- non-healing traumatic or postsurgical wounds
[source: Harder]
Luckily, if maggot therapy doesn't work, the treatment isn't hazardous in and of itself. (Unlike ancient treatments using leeches, which in addition to usually offering no benefit would further harm, if not kill, the patient.)
Although one study found that maggots do heal wounds faster, in about three weeks' time versus four weeks for conventional measures, other studies show that maggot therapy doesn't heal the wound faster than conventional therapies, but it does clean the wound faster (up to 18 times faster) [source: Times Online].
However, maggot therapy isn't intended to replace existing therapies, so comparisons are somewhat moot. It's never a doctor's first choice to put the creepy-crawlies on a wound -- it's a therapy used only when antibiotics and surgery haven't yielded positive results. For example, the virulent staph infection MRSA is resistant to most antibiotics. But 12 of 13 people with MRSA-contaminated wounds were cured using nothing but maggots [source: University of Manchester].
When all other options have failed, it's as good as time as any to bug out. For lots more information on maggot therapy, see the next page.