Andreas Michalsen

Importancia para la hirudoterapia

Andreas Michalsen (born 1961) is a German internist, nutritional-medicine physician and university teacher. He holds the endowed professorship (Stiftungsprofessur) of Clinical Naturopathy at the Institute of Social Medicine, Epidemiology and Health Economics of Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and is chief physician of the Department of Internal Medicine and Naturopathy at Immanuel Krankenhaus Berlin; he is also the author of non-fiction books on naturopathy and nutrition. His leech-therapy trials were conducted at the Department of Internal and Integrative Medicine of Kliniken Essen-Mitte. In the 2003 trial in the Annals of Internal Medicine, 51 patients with knee osteoarthritis received either a single treatment with four to six leeches or a 28-day course of topical diclofenac; pain at day 7 was significantly lower after leech therapy, and differences in function, stiffness and total symptoms favoured the leech group until the end of the study, with quality of life favoured until day 28 (PMID 14597456). A 2008 trial in Pain in 32 women with symptomatic osteoarthritis of the first carpometacarpal joint found that a single application of two to three leeches relieved pain and improved disability and quality of life for at least two months (PMID 18407413). He was last author of a 2011 randomised trial in 40 patients with chronic lateral epicondylitis, which reported superior short-term pain relief and intermediate-term functional improvement after a single course of leech therapy compared with 30 days of topical diclofenac (PMID 21368667), and last author of a 2018 randomised trial in 44 patients with chronic low back pain (PMID 30636672).