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Hirudo medicinalis, or the European medicinal leech, is one of several species of leeches used as medicinal leeches. Other species of Hirudo sometimes also used as medicinal leeches include H. orientalis, H. troctina, and H. verbana. The Asian medicinal leech includes Hirudinaria manillensis, and the North American medicinal leech is ...
Leeches have been used in medicine from ancient times until the 19th century to draw blood from patients. In modern times, leeches find medical use in treatment of joint diseases such as epicondylitis and osteoarthritis, extremity vein diseases, and in microsurgery, while hirudin is used as an anticoagulant drug to treat blood-clotting disorders.
Medical use [ edit ] While H. medicinalis has long been used in hirudotherapy , and is approved by the US FDA as a prescription medical device, a 2007 study employing genetic analysis found that the species being marketed as H. medicinalis , possibly for decades, was the recently distinguished H. verbana .
"Jawed leeches" - termed "Gnathobdellae" or "Gnathobdellida" - are exclusively found among the Hirudiniformes, but the order contains a number of jawless families as well. The jawed, toothed forms make up the aquatic Hirudidae and the terrestrial Haemadipsidae and Xerobdellidae (sometimes included in the preceding but worthy of recognition as ...
Hirudo verbana feeds on blood (hematophagy).During a blood meal, a leech rhythmically contracts its muscles to draw blood from a host animal into the crop for storage. It can consume over five times its own weight in blood in one feeding.
While there are over 100 types of arthritis and related conditions, Dr. Gendai Echezona, a fellowship-trained, triple board-certified anesthesiologist specializing in interventional pain ...