Scientists rearing thousands of maggots for treating wounds

They feed on dead tissue and bacteria in a wound, effectively cleaning it and promoting healing.

by WANGARI NDIRANGU KNA

Health20 March 2025 - 19:43

In Summary

Biotherapy, also known as immunotherapy, uses substances derived from living organisms to treat diseases and is thus important in management of such wounds.

The Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Research Organization (Karlo) is involved in the production of maggots for clinical therapy, a method of treating non-healing or infected wounds.

A wound is normally defined as chronic or non-healing if it takes basically more than three weeks to heal.

The therapy, also known as Maggot Debridement Therapy (MDT), involves using sterilised fly larvae (maggots) that feed on dead tissue and bacteria in a wound, effectively cleaning it and promoting healing.

Paul Ngare, from the Biotechnology Research Institute at Karlo Muguga and who works in Pharmacology and Microbiology research department, says they have been working on various technologies including maggot therapy.

“We use the green butterfly larvae to manage chronic wounds. The larvae normally eat the dead necrotic tissue from the wounds and feeds on harmful bacteria and the secretion which has enzymes destroy these harmful bacteria and provide a protective layer on the surface of the wound,” he explained.

Ngare noted that Maggot therapy is not a very new technology in Kenya, as it was introduced back in 2013 through the aid from the Syrian government, where groundwork was laid through collaborative research between Karlo, the University of Nairobi, and Kenyatta National Hospital.

Maggot therapy was also a common form of treatment in early civilisation, but with bacteria developing resistance to the antibiotics, healthcare practitioners are now reverting to maggot therapy as an alternative to treat wounds, especially chronic ones.

Ngare explained that sometimes a patient might have another underlying condition resulting in him or her being immuno-compromised and thus resistant to the bacteria.

Biotherapy, also known as immunotherapy, uses substances derived from living organisms to treat diseases and is thus important in management of such wounds.

Besides health, he noted that the advantage of maggots is if applied in forensic research, can be applied on conversion of waste to useful protein by allowing them to grow to the third instar larvae which is normally 10 to 20 millimetres and used as animal feeds once dried.

“Maggots are very rich in protein, which is about 60 percent protein, making it about twice the composition of protein in soil and can be mixed in animal feeds in the right proportions for feed formulation,” Ngare said.

On October 26, 2012, Kenyatta National Hospital, University of Nairobi (UoN) Ethics and Research Committee (KNH-UoN ERC) approved a pilot study entitled “Maggot Debridement Therapy: The Biotherapeutic Method of Healing Chronic Wounds in Kenya.”

The pilot study was conducted between August and December 2013 at KNH. Twenty-four patients were treated with a total of 30 maggot applications.

Globally about 500 million smallholder farmers, normally till about 83 percent of the available land, which contributes about a third of the food we get and in the recent future due to climate change, food security is becoming a big issue and therefore various technologies such as the maggot one can be able to bridge this gap in production.