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Animal healer for refractory diseases: Myth or reality?

Song, Mingzhi; Zhang, Changru; Yang, Simengge; Lu, Jialin; Sun, Tianze; Li, Heyue; Tang, Liang; ... Wang, Jinwu; + view all (2024) Animal healer for refractory diseases: Myth or reality? Heliyon , 10 (13) , Article e33056. 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e33056. Green open access

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Abstract

A vast amount of knowledge has been acquired through human activities such as farming, hunting, and fishing. Throughout history, humans have utilized living creatures for disease treatment, relying on the natural world's healing powers. The special “healers” may be able to treat patients via the power of nature. However, there was no systematic introduction or summary of these treatments. Therefore, we conducted a literature review based on PubMed, Google Scholar, Web of Science, Scopus, CNKI and WanFang DATA. Here, we defined this unique method as “animal healer” and six common kinds of animal healers were reviewed. These are fish therapy, pet therapy, worm therapy, leech therapy, maggot therapy, and bee therapy. According to the different characteristics of healers, treatment methods mainly included bite, parasitism, contact and communication. With the advantages of green and effectiveness, animal healers have great therapy potential against a variety of refractory diseases. The main purpose of this review is to draw people's attention to animal healer, promote it to become a possible clinical treatment strategy, and make further exploration in species cultivation, mechanism research, animal welfare, standard setting, safety evaluation and other aspects. In the future, animal healers will play an increasingly important role in medicine and hopefully solve more medical problems and dilemmas.

Type: Article
Title: Animal healer for refractory diseases: Myth or reality?
Location: England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e33056
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e33056
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © 2024 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Keywords: Living creatures; Animal healer; Nature; Refractory diseases; Therapy
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences > Div of Surgery and Interventional Sci
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences > Div of Surgery and Interventional Sci > Department of Ortho and MSK Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10198028
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