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Maggots eat up resistant bacteria

Maggots eat up resistant bacteria
The drug-resistant bug MRSA has a new adversary — the maggot. Researchers in Manchester, UK, have just won a grant to compare maggots with other more hi-tech treatments for people with diabetes who suffer from infected feet.

A quarter of all people with diabetes are at risk of foot ulcers, because of the reduced blood circulation caused by the damaging effects of high blood glucose. These lesions often become infected. Antibiotic-resistant bacateria such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) are becoming increasingly common — and consequently increasingly hard to treat. "MRSA is not just in hospitals, it's everywhere.
A small initial trial, published this February, showed considerable success.

Boulton is also collaborating with microbiologists to find out how the treatment works. The maggots might secrete an antibacterial goo, or they might be just devouring the infected flesh. Boulton has noticed that the MRSA infection is highly concentrated around the maggots — rather like iron filings around a magnet, he says. But at the moment how and why this happens is a mystery.

If the new trials also become valid, then this will be one of the treatment option in hospital for the wound that are resided by multiple antibiotic resistant bacteria, to whom many of the antibiotics failed to kill.

Source.
Nature News 4th May, 2007
Bowling F. L., Salgami E. V., Boulton A. J. M., et al. Diabetes Care, 30 . 370 - 371 (2007).

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