Small larvae were sent by mail from a laboratory in Campinas, in the interior of São Paulo, in Brazil, to hospitals in cities such as Natal, Rio de Janeiro, Petrópolis, Belo Horizonte and Porto Alegre.
They were larvae of two species of flies created, fed and sterilized by the biologist Patricia Thyssen, from the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), with a very specific medical purpose: to heal difficult-to-heal wounds.
The reason is that these larvae feed on decaying human tissue.
Therefore, when placed on the skin of infected wounds – caused, for example, by diabetes or venous ulcers – the larvae eat the dead tissue and secrete healing substances, reducing the use of antibiotics or even making them unnecessary.
This technique, known as larval therapy, which is still in its infancy in Brazil, has its roots in ancestral knowledge, although somewhat repulsive: there are historical records that peoples such as the Mayans, in Central America, and Australian aborigines already used larvae to heal wounds thousands of years ago.
since the mayans
The Maya, for example, bathed tissues in animal blood, left them exposed to the sun to attract flies, and then applied them to human wounds, where the larvae proliferated.
The technique was also empirically documented by physicians in medieval Europe, the American Civil War (1861-65), and World War I (1914-18).
Until, in the 20th century, penicillin and the antibiotic revolution made such treatments obsolete.
The problem is that today more and more antibiotics lose their effectiveness against resistant bacteria, something that the World Health Organization (WHO) treats as one of the ten greatest threats to public health today.
As a result, more health professionals have turned to the larvae in recent decades to treat chronic and infected wounds, resistant to antibiotics and traditional dressings.
2023-07-09 14:44:44
#live #larvae #heal #wounds
