The others were treated once with two or three leeches, which were allowed to latch onto the soft tissue on or near the joint at the base of the thumb. Sixteen of the women applied a commonly used painkilling ointment called dicyclofenac twice a day for 30 days. To see whether the bloodsuckers could also ease thumb-joint pain, Dobos's team randomly assigned 32 women with a median age of 64 to one of two groups. The worms inject a blood-thinning chemical called hirudin and several substances that fight inflammation-components that keep a prey's blood flowing in the wild ( ScienceNOW, 6 February 1998). Internist Gustav Dobos of the University of Essen in Germany, and his colleagues had successfully treated patients' arthritic knees with leeches before. Doctors usually prescribe painkilling pills, injections, or ointments, but none of the treatments work well.
Osteoarthritis of the thumb afflicts millions of people, causing joint pain debilitating enough to keep them from opening jars, writing notes, and gripping anything tightly. The findings, presented here yesterday at the North American Research Conference on Complementary and Integrative Medicine, may move leech treatment one large wriggle closer to the mainstream of medicine.
EDMONTON, ALBERTA-Bloodsucking leeches relieve the pain of thumb arthritis more effectively and for a longer period of time than the conventional painkilling ointment, according to new clinical trial results.
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