European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - August 24, 1988, Darmstadt, Hesse                                To your health doctors in Buffalo n. Y., used leeches to remove excess blood from the ear of a patient after surgery. Leeches make a medical comeback by Steve Lohr new York times Hen or. Roy Sawyer gazes into the medical future what he sees is Brownish Black Slimy and wriggling a Leech. Largely because of the work of Sawyer an expatriate american biologist living in Britain bloodsucking leeches Long viewed As a Symbol of medical barbarism Are making a comeback in modern Medicine. A Small but growing number of hospitals in Europe and the United states Are using leeches to prevent unwanted blood congestion after microsurgery to reattach body parts. And scientists at research centers and drug companies Are investigating whether enzymes in Leech saliva mainly anticoagulants could be used to treat heart attacks and strokes. Four years ago Sawyer set up what is believed to be the world s Only Leech farm Bio pharm Ltd. At Swansea Wales to grow and Breed them. Founded on Sawyer s optimism and with a $65,000 government backed loan the business has grown rapidly. Sawyer expects revenues to double to about $400,000 this year As the company markets More than 100,000 leeches to 150 hospitals and Sells chemicals from Leech saliva to researchers. More than half of Bio pharm s sales Are now in the United states and the company has just set up a distributing office in Charleston s.c., where Sawyer grew up and became enamoured of leeches. South Carolina was Well blessed with leeches he recalled. So i was Lucky  Bio pharm has received British government awards for Small business achievement and innovation. Sawyer even has met with prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Earlier this year Prince Charles visited the company s spartan facility on the second floor of a defunct Welsh steel works. Local officials have pointed to Bio pharm As the kind of business that South Wales needs now that its port and Coal mining industries have declined. Sawyer 45, has pursued his interest in leeches for nearly three decades from South Carolina to Swansea to the Amazon often in the face of ridicule and scepticism. Most modern doctors dismissed leeches which were used Long ago to draw blood from  patients. We started with the bad image of leeches and we started from scratch As a business he said but now people Are starting to take us and this Field  a Milestone in Sawyer s Effort to make the Leech the object of serious scientific study was the publication by the Oxford University press in 1986 of his three volume work Leech biology and behaviour which took him 12 years to Complete. In modern Medicine leeches have proven useful in microsurgery in which surgeons work for hours to reconnect an appendage. Doctors have found that an operation can fail because tiny blood vessels become clogged. But if a Small european Leech Hirundo Medicina is is attached it sucks out an ounce or two of blood from the clogged vessels and because of the anticoagulant in its saliva the wound drains Small amounts of blood for hours. One Case in 1985, involved a 5-year-old boy in the Boston area whose ear was bitten off by a dog. Or. Joseph Upton and surgeons at Boston children s Hospital sewed the ear Back on but it turned blackish Blue from blood congestion a few Days later. The doctors tried an anti clotting agent and making cuts in the ear but the child Guy Condelli was losing a lot of blood. Upton was aware of the use of leeches for Post surgical treatment and got in touch with Bio pharm. Sawyer s wife Lorna drove four hours to Heathrow Airport to put the Leech shipment on a Jet to Boston. Two leeches were attached to the boy s ear. The ear perked up right away recalled Upton who is also a physician at the Harvard medical school. It was obvious it was going to  in his Swansea office Sawyer has framed the letter of thanks printed in the shaky Block letters of a Little boy or. Sawyer thanks for helping my ear. Guy  the greatest potential for Leech research lies in the pharmaceutical possibilities of its saliva. Some Leech proteins might be used to treat cardiovascular disease. One of these hirudin found in the european Leech inhibits blood clotting. He Mentin from the Amazon Leech dissolves clots once they Are formed. A third substance or Gelase helps blood circulation around clots in the heart and May be useful in treating glaucoma. In june Bio pharm was granted a United states Patent for or Gelase Welsh for from the Leech and Hopes to begin clinical trials on humans by 1990. Today the proteins Are typically milked from leeches by forcing saliva out. To make  drugs on any Large scale would require genetic synthesis of the substances. To anyone willing to listen Sawyer Points out that leeches Are an endangered species in Many countries a fact that he admits is a matter of concern to him a handful of Leech philes and almost no one else. Even Sawyer concedes that his fondness is mainly intellectual. Like spiders and snakes leeches Are obnoxious he said picking up a 12-Inch amazonian Leech. But there is a fascination that goes with  Days on a carbohydrate free diet the rats were Given a to Choice of carbohydrates and other foods. In the first half hour the carbohydrate deprived group ate significantly More carbohydrates than a control group. The effect was Short lived because according to Wurtman their serotonin Levels had returned quickly Toi Normal. The researchers also fed All carbohydrate or carbohydrate and protein snacks respectively to two groups of rats. When they were fed again an hour later the rats that had All carbohydrate snacks ate fewer carbohydrates while those that had been Given mixed snacks ate More carbohydrates. When Wurtman began studying the diets of a group of Mit students he found that a certain subgroup always ate carbohydrate snacks and never ate protein snacks. Wurtman looked further and found that these students happened to be obese and reported craving carbohydrates. They also met accepted criteria for depression. He guessed that they had Low serotonin Levels. Wurtman gave them a drug called Fen Laramine which increases serotonin Levels. The result was that they significantly reduced their snacking and reduced the amount of carbohydrates they ate at meals but not the amount of protein. Carbohydrate consumption seems to have an effect on the subjective feelings of these people Wurtman  do they feel better i think it is because of an increase in  Wurtman found similar patterns among people with an unusual condition called seasonal depression during the seasons in which they were depressed they also reported profound carbohydrate cravings and gained weight. But during springtime a season when they Are not wednesday August 24, 1988 depressed their serotonin Levels returned to Normal and they also dramatically Cut Back their carbohydrate intake. Mealtime carbohydrate intake dropped from 145 to 100 Grams snack time intake dropped from 100 to 35, Wurtman said. Wurtman found a similar pattern among women with pre menstrual stress during one phase of their menstrual Cycle they ate far More carbohydrates than did a control group without pms the rest of the time the intake of both groups was the same. When Wurtman gave the serotonin increasing drug Fen Laramine to people with seasonal depression and people with pre menstrual stress he documented significant reductions in depression As measured by accepted psychological measures. What we re beginning to see is a series of disease states affecting mood and appetite that Are treatable with serotonin Wurtman concluded. The stars and stripes Page 17