Zootherapy is the use of living animals for medical treatment or as an adjunct to medical diagnosis

Medical diagnosis

Medical diagnosis refers both to the process of attempting to determine or identify a possible disease or disorder , and to the opinion reached by this process...

.

Overview

Zootherapy is the use of living organisms to diagnose, treat or cure disease or disease symptoms. Biotherapy encompasses, among other things, maggot therapy

Maggot therapy

Maggot therapy is a type of biotherapy involving the intentional introduction of live, disinfected maggots into the non-healing skin and soft tissue wound of a human or animal for the purpose of cleaning out the...

 (maggot

Maggot

In everyday speech the word maggot means the larva of a fly ; it is applied in particular to the larvae of Brachyceran flies, such as houseflies, cheese flies, and blowflies, rather than larvae of the Nematocera, such as mosquitoes and Crane flies...

 debridement therapy [MDT], larva

Larva

A larva is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle...

 therapy), leech

Leech

Leeches are segmented worms that belong to the phylum Annelida and comprise the subclass Hirudinea. Like other oligochaetes such as earthworms, leeches share a clitellum and are hermaphrodites. Nevertheless, they differ from other oligochaetes in significant ways...

 therapy (hirudotherapy), honey bee

Honey bee

Honey bees are a subset of bees in the genus Apis, primarily distinguished by the production and storage of honey and the construction of perennial, colonial nests out of wax. Honey bees are the only extant members of the tribe Apini, all in the genus Apis...

 therapy (apitherapy

Apitherapy

Apitherapy is the medical use of honey bee products. This can include the use of honey, pollen, bee bread, propolis, royal jelly, apilarnil and bee venom....

), fish therapy (ichthiotherapy), pet therapy, detection dog

Detection dog

A detection dog or sniffer dog is a dog that is trained to and works at using its senses to detect substances such as explosives, illegal drugs, or blood. Hunting dogs that search for game and search dogs that search for missing humans are generally not considered detection dogs...

s, medical response dog

Medical response dog

A medical response dog is a specific type of service dog specifically trained to help mitigate an individual's medical disability. Typically, they are dogs whose job does not handle primarily epilepsy or psychiatric-based conditions, though some seizure response dogs or psychiatric service dogs may...

s, phage therapy

Phage therapy

Phage therapy is the therapeutic use of bacteriophages to treat pathogenic bacterial infections. Although extensively used and developed mainly in former Soviet Union countries circa 1920, this method of therapy is still being tested for treatment of a variety of bacterial and poly-microbial...

, and helminthic therapy

Helminthic therapy

Helminthic therapy, a type of immunotherapy, is the treatment of autoimmune diseases and immune disorders by means of deliberate infestation with a helminth or with the ova of a helminth. Helminths are parasitic worms such as hookworms and whipworms....

. The latter, helminthic therapy, is also a class of immunotherapy

Immunotherapy

Immunotherapy is a medical term defined as the "treatment of disease by inducing, enhancing, or suppressing an immune response". Immunotherapies designed to elicit or amplify an immune response are classified as activation immunotherapies. While immunotherapies that reduce or suppress are...

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Treatment with animals is animalo- or zootherapy.
Biotherapy is direction of natural therapy. Organotherapy is part of biotherapy, then for treatment use the extract's of animals organs. Examples include cerebrolysine, cardium, placenta and other.

External links

• Maggot Therapy Project web site at the University of California, Irvine, list of maggot therapy practitioners
• http://www.bterfoundation.org/ BioTherapeutics Education and Research Foundation
• http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/10/1024_031024_maggotmedicine.html
• http://www.helminthictherapy.com/ Site describing helminthic therapy, the use of parasitic intestinal worms, to treat immunological disorders.
• http://autoimmunetherapies.com/ Site providing helminthic therapy based on hookworm or whipworm (human)