Abstract Aims Medicinal leeches (Annelida: Hirudinea) are fresh water ectoparasitic species
which have been applied as traditional therapy. However, gut microbiota could bring high …

Culture-based studies of the microbial community within the gut of the medicinal leech have
typically been focused on various Aeromonas species, which were believed to be the sole …

Leeches are found in terrestrial, aquatic, and marine habitats on all continents.
Sanguivorous leeches have been used in medicine for millennia. Modern scientific uses …

Microbial transmission through mucosal-mediated mechanisms is widespread throughout
the animal kingdom. One example of this occurs with Hirudo verbana, the medicinal leech …

There are trillions of microbes found throughout the human body and they exceed the
number of eukaryotic cells by 10-fold. Metagenomic studies have revealed that the majority …

ABSTRACT FDA-approved, postoperative use of leeches can lead to bacterial infections. In
this study, we used culture-dependent and culture-independent approaches to characterize …

Background: There are at least three distinct European leech species used medicinally:
Hirudo medicinalis, H. orientalis, and H. verbana. Infection caused by leech microbiota is the …

Recent omics studies have attracted attention to the role of the microbial community for
maintaining host organism. This is particularly true for hematophagous due to different …

Digestive-tract microbiota exert tremendous influence over host health. Host-symbiont model
systems are studied to investigate how symbioses are initiated and maintained, as well as to …

All leeches are either predatory or parasitic carnivores. The majority of blood-sucking
leeches live in fresh water environments. The typical habitat is a eutrophic pond with a …