According to a study in the British Medical Journal by British doctors, using flesh eating maggots to treat leg ulcers cleaned the wounds more quickly than normal treatment but did not lead to faster healing.

This was a treatment used by Europeans about 700 years ago and researchers tried to check the efficacy of the treatment in the world's first controlled clinical trial of maggot medicine.

Researchers at the University of York studied 267 patients in the United Kingdom who had venous leg ulcers from 2004 to 2007. They treated the patients either with a conventional hydro-gel treatment for ulcers or with the maggots.

The maggots that were used were bred in sterile conditions and were the size of a grain of rice. These were then either packed into a packet the size of a teabag or corralled into the wound with bandages.

The researchers noted that the patients who were treated with the maggots healed just as quickly as those with the gel but had to endure more pain in the process. Nicky Cullum, one of the paper's authors and a professor at the University of York, said enzymes secreted by the maggots that could have struck the patients' nerve endings could have caused the pain.

The pain would not have been from the maggots actually eating the dead tissue. "They're not chomping down with big teeth or anything," Cullum said. "They're just hoovering up goo."

The cost factor of the maggots and gel was reported to be at par in another study was published Friday in the BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal.

Dr. Harold Brem, a wound expert at New York University Langone Medical Center who was not connected to either BMJ study said, "Maggots definitely work, but this is not the standard of care in any developed country. If you are out in a remote place and don't have access to a surgeon or good medical care, then maybe maggots are an option."

Although the maggots ate up dead tissue quicker than the gel, that didn't speed up the healing and the rates of side effects in both treatments were similar affecting about
14 % of patients.

Cullum added that although he did not expect maggots to become standard treatment for leg ulcers, the study proved their worth as an alternative option. Medical experts have been looking again at the creatures' healing powers, including their potential to prevent dangerous infections like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus
(MRSA).

Maggots could have advantages in some specialized areas, such as preparing patients for skin grafts, where faster wound cleaning means patients can be moved into surgery more swiftly.

Larval therapy works because maggots eat only dead and rotting tissue, leaving a clean wound. They do not burrow into healthy flesh, preferring to eat each other when they run out of food. But establishing this will require further clinical studies.

Cullum said, "It doesn't seem to be worth pursuing in this particular group of patients, if what you are aiming for is quicker healing."