Investigation of the therapeutic effects of medicinal leech treatment on lower extremity ischemia-reperfusion injury

OBJECTIVES: This study aims to investigate the therapeutic effects of medical leech treatment (MLT) on ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injuries in the lower extremities of rats. METHODS: A total of 18 Wistar Albino rats were used and randomly assigned to three groups: Sham (n=6), I/R (n=6), and MLT (n=6). The I/R group rats underwent I/R induction in the femoral artery using an atraumatic vascular clamp. The same was done for the MLT group, after which MLT was carried out on the gastrocnemius muscle region of each rat. Histopathological analysis of the tissue and biochemical analysis was performed on the serum and tissue samples of the rats of each group. RESULTS: According to the histopathological analysis, the scores of edema, degeneration, necrosis and inflammation of the MLT group were significantly lower than the I/R group (p<0.001). In the tissue and serum biochemical analysis, no statistically significant differences were detected among groups for interleukin-6 (IL-6), superoxide dismutase (SOD), calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP), nitric oxide (NO), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α), ischemia-modified albumin (IMA), glutathione peroxidase (GPx), catalase (CAT) and endothelin-1 (EDN-1) levels. CONCLUSIONS: Although biochemical analysis results showed no significant differences among the groups, the histopathological analysis suggests notable clinical therapeutic effects of MLT in I/R models. Further research is warranted to substantiate these findings.

Abstract sourced from PubMed (NCBI) for the cited record. See the original publication for the authoritative version.

This study aims to investigate the therapeutic effects of medical leech treatment (MLT) on ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injuries in the lower extremities of rats.

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