Diverse Molecular Data Demonstrate That Commercially Available Medicinal Leaches are not Hirudo Medicinalis

The main focus of this paper (Siddal et al. 2007) was to use various molecular techniques (discussed in detail later) as a means of identifying what Hirudo species are available commercially as medicinal leeches. While at least five species of medicinal leeches have been recognized, they are almost indistinguishable morphologically. Although historically there has been extensive use of leeches medicinally, only Hirudo medicinalis has been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA). The goals for determining the various species of Hirudo available commercially are as follows: maintaining accordance with US FDA regulations on these commercially available organisms; ensuring correct identification of H. medicinalis as a model organism for research; and extending conservation efforts to other species of Hirudo unknowingly used for medicinal purposes.

Thirteen individuals of both H. medicinalis and H. verbana were collected and identified by dorsal color patterning. Along with wild individuals, commercially available specimens were collected from four separate suppliers and from two labs where H. medicinalis is used as a model organism. Molecular data was provided via DNA barcoding and nuclear microsatellites. Microsatellite data can be used to distinguish between individuals of the same species and show genetic variablility between closely related taxa.

Wild and commercially available individuals were sampled with nine loci (HcA10, HvH08, Hm8, Hm10, Hm12, Hv351, HvT379, Hm1, and Hm2) to help in determination their species placement. Amplification of these loci was performed via polymerase chain reactions (PCRs) with various primer sets. Microsatellite data was also subjected to computational analysis of popu...

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...isms can have many detrimental effects on research conducted today and in the future. Hopefully, studies like these will become more common. Molecular profiling of model organisms should become commonplace in the commercial distributions of these organisms (as suggested by the author).

A total of 38 papers were cited in the reference section. Many of the citations came from the published work of the authors of this paper. The dates of these references ranged from monographs published in the early 1800s (1827 the earliest) to recent research published on leeches as model organisms (latest in 2006).

Works Cited

Siddal, M. E., Trontelj, P., Utevsky, S. Y., Nkamany, M. & Macdonald III, K. S. 2007 Diverse molecular data demonstrate that commercially available medicinal leeches are not Hirudo medicinalis. Proc. R. Soc. B. 273, 1481-1487. (doi:10.1098/rspb.2007.0248)