Wound-care clinics around the country are giving maggots a try on some of their sickest patients after high-tech treatments fail.

It's a therapy quietly championed since the early 1990s by a California physician who's earned the nickname - https://www.sportsblog.com/search?search=nickname Dr. Maggot. But Dr. Ronald Sherman's maggots are getting more attention since, in January, they became the first live animals to win U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval — as a medical device to clean out wounds.

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A medical device? They remove the dead tissue that impedes healing "mechanically," FDA determined. It's called chewing.

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But maggots do more than that, says Sherman, who raises the tiny, wormlike fly larvae in a laboratory at the University of California, Irvine. His research shows that in the mere two to three days they live in a wound, maggots also produce substances that kill bacteria and stimulate growth of healthy tissue.

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Still, "it takes work to convince people" — including hospital administrators — that "maggots do work very well," said Dr. Robert Kirsner, who directs the University of Miami Cedars Wound Cente

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"They'll probably be easier to use now that they're FDA-approved, and we'll talk about it more and think about it more," Kirsner said. He estimates he uses maggots in about one in 50 patients where conventional therapy alone isn't enoug

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This has been quite a year for wormlike critters. In June, FDA also gave its seal of approval to leeches, those bloodsuckers that help plastic surgeons save severed body parts by removing pooled blood and restoring circulation. And in the spring, University of Iowa researchers reported early evidence that drinking whipworm eggs, which causes a temporary, harmless infection, might soothe inflammatory bowel disease by diverting the overactive immune reaction that causes i

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There's a little more yuck factor with maggots. Most people know of them from TV crime dramas, where infestations of bodies help determine time of deat

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Actually, maggots' medicinal qualities have long been known. Civil War surgeons noted that soldiers whose wounds harbored maggots seemed to fare better. In the 1930s, a Johns Hopkins University surgeon's research sparked routine maggot therapy, until antibiotics came along a decade late

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Maggot therapy is offered in around 50 hospitals throughout Britain for various conditions, ranging from burns, to aiding recovery after surgery. The most common uses, however, are for cleaning infected wounds, and for treating pressure sore

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Today, despite precise surgical techniques to cut out dying tissue, artificial skin and other high-tech treatments, hard-to-heal wounds remain a huge problem. Diabetic foot ulcers alone strike about 600,000 people annually and lead to thousands of amputation

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It's not unusual to spend two years and $30,000 treating one, says Dr. David G. Armstrong, a Chicago specialist who first tried maggot therapy in frustration about seven years ago and says he's now used it on several hundred patient

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Drop maggots into the wound and cover with a special mesh to keep them in place. Two to three days later, after the maggots have eaten their fill, lift them off and dispos

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Wound size determines how many maggots, and how many cycles of therapy, are needed. It typically costs a few hundred dollars, 카지노사이트 - http://www.ledo.nl/ says Armstrong, of the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Scienc

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By Lauran Neergaard

Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program provided a safety net for children whose parents' coverage ended or 카지노사이트 - https://staylocal.co/ became too expensive during the economic downturn at the start of the decade, said the Center for Studying Health System Change, a private research organization in Washington, D.C.

"Public insurance clearly picked up the slack," the group said in its report.

A separate Urban Institute report highlighted problems children face when they lack insurance, including missing regular checkups and visiting hospital emergency rooms for routine care. Nearly half of uninsured children had no checkup in the last year, that report said.

The studies were released in tandem by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as part of its Covering Kids and Families campaign to boost children's health insurance. The foundation said lack of insurance is especially pronounced among African-American and Hispanic children.

Public insurance programs typically see enrollment increase when the economy slows and people lose their jobs. The study of employer coverage found 67 percent of Americans were insured through their employers in 2001. By 2003, that number had dropped to 63.4 percent.

Sustained economic growth should increase employer - http://www.paramuspost.com/search.php?query=increase%20employer&type=all... coverage, easing the burden on public programs, the health research group said.

As it is, states that have struggled with budget crises because of the economy are trying to cut health program costs, although several million more children are eligible for them. State actions have included restricting eligibility, freezing - http://mondediplo.com/spip.php?page=recherche&recherche=freezing enrollment and increasing participants' contributions, several studies have found.

Federal and state governments share the costs of both Medicaid, which provides health care for the poorest families and children, and SCHIP, for children from working poor families.

The plans cover more than 17 million children, the Johnson foundation said. Eligibility varies by state, but on average, a family of four earning up to $37,000 a year can qualify, it said.By Mark Sherman

An Environmental Protection Agency official responded that the study misconstrued EPA data and created no reason for the government to change its recommendations on eating wild freshwater fish. An official of a commercial fish trade group said the study examined data on recreational fishing, not farm-raised freshwater fish found in supermarkets.

About 2,500 fish collected from 260 bodies of water from 1999 to 2001 showed the presence of mercury, the report said. The toxic metal can cause neurological and developmental problems, particularly in young children.

The report was prepared for Clear the Air, a joint campaign of the Clean Air Task Force, the National Environmental Trust and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. The study recommended more restrictions on mercury emissions - http://www.guardian.co.uk/search?q=mercury%20emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Seventy-six percent of the fish samples exceeded EPA's mercury exposure limit for children of average weight under the age of three, the report said. And 55 percent contained mercury that exceeded the limit for women of average weight, it said. The report assumed that people in both groups ate fish twice a week.

The high levels of mercury raise the risks of neurological problems in young children or in fetuses of women who ate the fish, 카지노사이트 - http://pgneetindia.com/ said Emily Figdor, a clean air advocate at U.S. PIRG and the study's author. She could not say how many more such cases could be expected.

Although the EPA agrees that mercury exposure is a serious public health issue, the Clear the Air study misused EPA's exposure limits, said EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman.

The advocacy group, in saying the mercury exceeded safe levels, applied standards the EPA set very low to be on the conservative and safe side of any possible errors, Bergman said. The study also based its estimates on material not from EPA, taking its consumption estimates from the American Heart Association's recommendation that people ought to eat two fish meals a week, she said.

The report does not create a reason for the EPA and the Food and Drug Administration to change the guidance the agencies gave in March on eating wild fish, Bergman said. The agencies said people should check with state or local authorities to learn the safety of the fish. If no such advice is available, people should eat no more than one six-ounce portion a week and should eat no other fish, they said.

Consumers who buy their freshwater fish at markets should not be alarmed about the study, which looked at sources of recreationally caught fish, said Bob Collette, vice president for science and technology at the National Fisheries Institute, a fish industry trade group.

Most freshwater fish that people eat is raised on farms and is not a danger, Collette said.

The report said reducing mercury emissions from power plants is crucial to reducing unsafe levels of mercury in the fish. It criticized the Bush administration as planning to "delay even modest reductions in mercury from power plants until after 2025."

The EPA's Bergman said the administration had taken a big step forward by deciding to regulate the emissions, but she said technology needed for plants to make the cuts had not yet proved itself. U.S. PIRG's Figdor disputed that, and said some states were imposing earlier deadlines on emissions control than the EPA has planned.

Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program provided a safety net for children whose parents' coverage ended or became too expensive - https://knoji.com/search/?query=expensive during the economic downturn at the start of the decade, said the Center for Studying Health System Change, 카지노사이트 - http://albawatch.co.kr/ a private research organization in Washington, D.C.

"Public insurance clearly picked up the slack," the group said in its report.

A separate Urban Institute report highlighted problems children face when they lack insurance, including missing regular checkups and visiting hospital emergency rooms for routine care. Nearly half of uninsured children had no checkup in the last year, that report said.

The studies were released in tandem by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as part of its Covering Kids and Families campaign to boost children's health insurance. The foundation said lack of insurance is especially pronounced among African-American and Hispanic children.

Public insurance programs typically see enrollment increase when the economy slows and people lose their jobs. The study of employer coverage found 67 percent of Americans were insured through their employers in 2001. By 2003, that number had dropped to 63.4 percent.

Sustained economic growth should increase employer coverage, easing the burden on public programs, the health research group said.

As it is, states that have struggled with budget crises because of the economy are trying to cut health program costs, although several million more children are eligible for them. State actions have included restricting eligibility, freezing enrollment and increasing participants' contributions, several studies have found.

Federal and state governments share the costs of both Medicaid, which provides health care for the poorest families and children, and SCHIP, for children from working poor families - http://ms-jd.org/search/results/search&keywords=poor%20families/ .

The plans cover more than 17 million children, the Johnson foundation said. Eligibility varies by state, but on average, a family of four earning up to $37,000 a year can qualify, it said.By Mark Sherman