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

Researchers used green bottle fly larvae to treat 13 diabetics whose foot ulcers were contaminated with MRSA. All but one were cured within a mean period of three weeks, instead of the usual 28 for conventional treatment.

Professor Andrew Boulton, who published the results in Diabetes Care, will now do further tests, funded by Diabetes UK. Maggots eat dead tissue and bacteria, leaving healthy tissue to heal.

The group of diabetics, aged between 18 and 80, had sterile larvae applied between two and eight times — depending on the size of foot ulcer — for four days at a time. All but one was cleared of the superbug.

“This is very exciting,” Professor Boulton said yesterday. “If confirmed in a randomised controlled trial, larval treatment would offer the first noninvasive and risk-free treatment of this problem.”

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