IT’S not a treatment for the faint-hearted. Now it seems that not only do maggots eat away the dead tissue from wounds and allow healing to begin, they also secrete a fluid containing enzymes to speed up the healing process.
Stephen Britland at the University of Bradford, UK, and his colleagues applied extracts of maggot juice to layers of cells that mimic skin. When circular “wounds” were created in the cell layers, those exposed to the maggot extracts healed fastest (Biotechnology Progress, DOI: 10.1021/bp0601600).
Closer analysis revealed that protease enzymes in the juice caused specialised repair cells to move…
