The Star Online: Lifestyle: Health
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Health |
| Posted: Russian leech farm supplies doctors who trust this ancient therapy. YELENA Titova shakes a jar holding a few dozen leeches writhing in slightly murky water. When one of them sinks to the bottom, motionless, she plunges her hand in and retrieves the late bloodsucker. She doesn't mind when the survivors try to latch on to her – in fact, she quite likes it. Titova's title is quality-control chief at the International Medical Leech Center, where she has worked for 28 years. But really, she says, she's a nurturer. "All our leech growers are women, because you can tend to leeches with love and care only if you have a motherly instinct," she says. "Men are no good for this job." Titova's breeding facility in this quiet, drab town produces as many as three million leeches a year for sale to medical clinics in Russia and nearby countries. Located in an industrial area about 32km southeast of Moscow, it's one of the oldest and largest leech-farming operations in the world.  In Russia, tens of thousands of patients undergo treatment with hirudo medicinalis and their anticoagulant saliva for anything from infertility to high blood pressure. — MCT The creatures may spark revulsion in much of the West, but in Russia, the ancient practice of leech therapy remains a common form of medical care, with tens of thousands of patients undergoing treatment with hirudo medicinalis and their anticoagulant saliva for anything from infertility to high blood pressure. Because of the higher costs for more modern forms of medication, and a healthy fear of swallowing the bogus pills that have proliferated here, many Russians and their doctors continue to swear by the dark brown worms. Titova, 52, explains that other companies in Russia and Europe collect wild leeches and grow them in open-air reservoirs. That's not her style. "Our production is all indoors and all year round," she says during a tour of the farm. "We have everything here: a mating section, a breeding section, a cocoon section where mother leeches produce offspring." She mentions that the facility once provided leeches for the dictator Josef Stalin, who used them to treat headaches and depression. "You can only imagine the fear and horror the doctors administering leeches to this madman felt, as any painful sensation, any inconvenience, could cost them their lives," she says. "Luckily, Stalin felt good after each such treatment, and our farm got a future." The short and sturdily built Titova sniffs at modern breeding techniques that involve big aquariums and computerised sensors, saying they can't detect sick or dying leeches. As she passes through a section of the plant, she smells the air, then shakes her head. She calls out to a nearby leech tender, revealing her tendency to treat leeches as human: "Funny smell. Did someone die here?" Yuri Kuranov, 55, a successful Moscow businessman, has used leeches periodically for the last seven years to treat a urinary condition. He reclines comfortably on a couch in a private medical clinic in southwest Moscow. His eyes closed, a contented smile on his lips, he appears oblivious to the slimy creatures crawling below his exposed belly button. "It is like a mosquito bite," Kuranov says as eight leeches do their work. "I understand it is mostly a psychological phenomenon, but almost immediately I start feeling as if a new life force is flowing up and down my veins and arteries." In the United States, the use of leeches is rare, although they are an FDA-approved medical device (as are maggots). They're considered invaluable among some plastic and orthopaedic surgeons, and are occasionally used to maintain circulation after the reattachment of fingers, hands and scalps. "When there's a crisis and you can't structurally repair blood vessels, we call our friends the leeches," said Dr. L. Scott Levin, chairman of orthopedic surgery at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The farm at Udelnaya typically sells the leeches for US$1.50 (RM4.65) apiece, and anywhere from one to 10 may be prescribed to feast on a patient, depending on the condition. Most of the leeches sold for medical use are one to two inches long. The breeder leeches are (somewhat alarmingly) larger. After being hatched in specially built boxes filled with peat to mimic the wet turf the mother leeches burrow into in nature, the babies are placed in the jars, about 1,000 to a container. The jars fill five production shops on the farm. The leeches are separated by size as they grow. After a year, they'll be ready for sale. Titova and about 30 tenders examine each of the jars several times a day. The glass nurseries, many of which once held pickled vegetables or tomato sauce, contain filtered water that's changed at least twice a week, she says. One grower, Lyubov Guseva, who has worked at the farm more than 20 years, says you need to adore leeches to grow them properly. (Her first name means "love" in Russian.) "I have this feeling as if these were my children as I feed them, caress them and give them my love," Guseva says tenderly as she puts one jar down and raises another to the light, stirring it to watch its inhabitants move. "I can't tell if they know that I Iove them, but every time I hold them in my hands I feel this sensation of goodness." The main component of the work at the farm is feeding. The leeches dine once every three to four weeks, sucking up five times their weight. Their food is cattle blood, supplied by slaughterhouses near Moscow. The plant uses about 300 gallons a week, the blood of more than 100 slaughtered cows. The blood is always fresh, sometimes still warm, supplied to the farm on the day of slaughter, Titova says. The post-communist years after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union proved difficult for the farm, since many drugstores stopped ordering leeches because they weren't as profitable as pills. Many private clinics continue to practise leech therapy, but large, mainstream medical clinics rarely use the creatures anymore. "When I first started, we used to have a bottle full of leeches on a round-the-clock duty desk, but not anymore," says Yelena Syrkina, a docent at the cardiological clinic at I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University. These days, "we usually prescribe anticoagulant drugs instead. Although from time to time when I see a patient, I still think, 'He could do with a leech.'" Moscow pediatrician Irinia Pankova, however, believes that leeches remain an important treatment in the fields of urology and gynaecology, as well as in blood pressure and stroke cases. She says that many young doctors are reluctant to prescribe hirudo therapy, but that it is still very popular with Russians who trust all-natural cures. – Los Angeles Times/McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
| Coffee and tea may protect your liver Posted: Your morning cup of coffee or tea may do more than just perk you up. IN a study announced last week, an international team of researchers led by Duke University School of Medicine in North Carolina suggests that increased caffeine intake may reduce fatty liver in people with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Worldwide, 70% of people diagnosed with diabetes and obesity have NAFLD, the major cause of fatty liver not due to excessive alcohol consumption, the researchers said. Currently, there are no effective treatments for NAFLD except diet and exercise. Using cell culture and mouse models, head researcher Dr Paul Yen and his team found that caffeine stimulated the metabolisation of lipids stored in liver cells and decreased the fatty liver of mice that were fed a high-fat diet. According to the findings, researchers said that the equivalent caffeine intake of four cups of coffee or tea a day may be beneficial in preventing and protecting against the progression of NAFLD in humans. The findings appear online and will be published in the September issue of the journal Hepatology. "This is the first detailed study of the mechanism for caffeine action on lipids in liver and the results are very interesting," Yen said. "Coffee and tea are so commonly consumed and the notion that they may be therapeutic, especially since they have a reputation for being 'bad' for health, is especially enlightening." Prior research has already associated caffeine with decreased risk of liver disease and reduced fibrosis in patients with chronic liver disease. Last year, a separate study published in the same journal found that drinking coffee reduces the risk of advanced fibrosis in those NAFLD. – AFP Relaxnews |
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