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Home > Medical Professionals > FDA Announcements > FDA Clears Medicinal Leeches for Marketing

FDA Clears Medicinal Leeches for Marketing

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has for the first time cleared the commercial marketing of leeches for medicinal purposes.

Leeches can help heal skin grafts by removing blood pooled under the graft and restore blood circulation in blocked veins by removing pooled blood.

Leeches have been used as an alternative treatment to blood-letting and amputation for several thousand years.  They reached their height of medicinal use in the mid- 1800’s.  Today they are used in medicine throughout the world as tools in skin grafts and reattachment surgery.

Medicinal leeches (Hirudo medicinalis) are bloodsucking aquatic animals that live in fresh water.

Ricarimpex SAS, a French firm, is the first company to request and receive FDA clearance to market leeches as medical devices.  The firm has been breeding leeches for 150 years.  They are handled in a certified facility that tracks each lot.

Revised June 28, 2004