Superbug devoured by Superlarvae

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Superbug!what’s that?There’s a news
going around “Va. Teen Dies After Drug-Resistant Staph Infection”and “21 schools closed to clear infections”etc.The bug in question is the disgraced bacteria Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus also mentioned as MRSA.

Superlarvae?Its the thing we looked down upon .We were wrong.Those maggots , which appears in neglected wounds,are actually our friends.This long forgotten “maggot therapy” was brought to the forefront by Dr. Ronald Sherman, a physician presently at the University of California, Irvine.The beneficial maggots, that he used, is now being marketed as “Medical maggots”.

When a wound gets infected, say with MRSA.Some tissues and cells die.The bugs thrives in these tissues.It may not be possible to remove all these necrotic tissues harmlessly through surgical debridement.Antibiotics couldn’t kill these bugs because they have developed resistance to most antibiotics. The costly ones do work but early reporting and detection is important.

So what role does the maggots play in the whole scheme of things?They eat up all those harmful dead and necrotic tissues.Along with those tissues the bacteria also gets devoured by them.Healthy tissues are unaffected.

Great!So simple!That’s not all .These maggots secretions are believed to have broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity.Their secretion contains beneficial factors like allantoin, urea, phenylacetic acid, phenylacetaldehyde, calcium carbonate and proteolytic enzymes.

Thus, and may be more yet to be discovered ways,these ugly looking maggots are so admirable in action.