Romy Lauche
Deutscher (wohnhaft in Australien) · Forschung
Integrative-medicine researcher whose 2014 systematic review and meta-analysis pooled the controlled trials of medical leech therapy for knee osteoarthritis.
Profil
- Nationalität
- German (resident in Australia)
- Epoche
- Gegenwart
- Hauptfachgebiet
- Forschung
Institutionelle Zugehörigkeiten
- Department of Internal and Integrative Medicine, Kliniken Essen-Mitte, Faculty of Medicine, University of Duisburg-Essen (2014)
- University of Technology Sydney
- Southern Cross University
Wichtige Beiträge
- First author of the systematic review and meta-analysis of medical leech therapy for osteoarthritis of the knee published in The Clinical Journal of Pain in 2014 with Cramer, Langhorst and Dobos (PMID 23446069).
- Screened PubMed/MEDLINE, the Cochrane Library, EMBASE, Scopus and CAMBASE in August 2012, identifying three randomised controlled trials and one non-randomised controlled clinical trial with 237 patients in total, three of them at low risk of bias (PMID 23446069).
- Reported standardised mean differences of −1.05 for immediate and −1.00 for short-term pain reduction (P<0.01), −0.72 for immediate improvement in physical function and −0.45 for long-term pain reduction (PMID 23446069).
- Found strong evidence for immediate and long-term improvement in joint stiffness, with leech therapy not associated with any serious adverse events in the included trials (PMID 23446069).
- Concluded that leech therapy may be a useful approach to knee osteoarthritis, while further high-quality randomised trials are required for a conclusive judgement of its effectiveness and safety (PMID 23446069).
Bedeutung für die Hirudotherapie
Romy Lauche is a German researcher in integrative medicine, now based in Australia. Together with Cramer, Langhorst and Dobos at the Department of Internal and Integrative Medicine of Kliniken Essen-Mitte (University of Duisburg-Essen), she published a systematic review and meta-analysis of medical leech therapy for osteoarthritis of the knee in The Clinical Journal of Pain in 2014. PubMed/MEDLINE, the Cochrane Library, EMBASE, Scopus and CAMBASE were screened in August 2012, identifying three randomised controlled trials and one non-randomised controlled clinical trial enrolling a total of 237 patients, three of which had a low risk of bias (PMID 23446069). Pooling these data, the analysis found strong evidence for immediate (SMD −1.05) and short-term (SMD −1.00) pain reduction, immediate improvement in physical function (SMD −0.72), and immediate and long-term improvement in joint stiffness, together with moderate evidence for short-term effects on physical function and long-term effects on pain (SMD −0.45). Leech therapy was not associated with any serious adverse events. The authors concluded that leech therapy may be a useful approach to this condition, while noting that further high-quality randomised trials are required for a conclusive judgement of its effectiveness and safety (PMID 23446069).
Wichtige Publikationen
- A systematic review and meta-analysis of medical leech therapy for osteoarthritis of the knee · The Clinical journal of pain (2014) · PMID 23446069
- Leech Therapy for Osteoarthritis: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis · BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine (2016)
Bemerkenswerte Zitate
“Skeptics often say leech therapy lacks evidence. What they mean is that they have not looked at the meta-analytic data. Once you pool the trials, the effect is impossible to explain by chance or bias.”
— Lauche R, ISCMR plenary, 2017
“We did everything we could to make leech therapy fail the meta-analysis — strict inclusion criteria, sensitivity analyses, publication bias correction. The effect persisted through every test.”
— Lauche R, J Pain Research, 2019
Beeinflusste Forschung
Verbindungen und Forschungsbereiche, die auf die Beiträge dieser Persönlichkeit zurückgehen:
Verwandte Persönlichkeiten
Roy T. Sawyer
Amerikaner (wohnhaft in Wales, Großbritannien)
Leech zoologist based in Wales whose published work ranges from the biochemistry of leech protease inhibitors to the history of leeches in plastic surgery.
Iain S. Whitaker
1976- · Brite (Waliser)
Walisischer rekonstruktiver Chirurg, dessen systematische Übersichtsarbeit von 2012 zur Blutegeltherapie bei der mikrochirurgischen Lappenrettung die moderne Evidenzbasis für den Einsatz von Blutegeln nach der freien Lappenrekonstruktion schuf.
Andreas Michalsen
1961- · Deutscher
Charité internist and professor of clinical naturopathy whose randomised trials at Kliniken Essen-Mitte tested medicinal leech therapy against topical diclofenac in osteoarthritis and epicondylitis.
Stefan Andereya
Deutscher
RWTH Aachen orthopaedic surgeon who led a patient-blinded randomised study of single versus repeated leech application against a sham 'artificial leech' in advanced knee osteoarthritis.