Maggots of the common bluebottle can fight off the superbug MRSA, researchers from Manchester University announced today.

They discovered that when free-range larvae from the insect were applied to the MRSA-infected foot ulcers of 13 diabetic patients, they cleared up the infection in all but one case.

Head of the research team Professor Andrew Bolton said he was confident that the treatment could be just as successful in MRSA infections in other parts of the body.

He said: "Maggots are the world's smallest surgeons. In fact they are better than surgeons - they are much cheaper and work 24 hours a day.

"They have been used since the Napoleonic wars and in the American civil war they found that those who survived were the ones with maggots in their wounds: they kept them clean. They remove dead tissue and bacteria, leaving the healthy tissue to heal."

Prof Bolton and his team have been using maggots for the last 10 years to treat foot ulcers developed by patients at the Manchester Diabetes Centre and foot clinics, as well as in-patients at Manchester Royal Infirmary.

But they decided to see whether maggots had any effect on beating MRSA after they noticed that the number of patients with ulcers infected by the superbug had doubled in last three years.

Prof Bolton admitted that the results were a surprise but "very exciting."

He said: "We have demonstrated for the first time the potential of larval therapy to eliminate MRSA infection of diabetic foot ulcers.

"If confirmed in a randomised controlled trial, larval treatment would offer the first non-invasive and risk-free treatment of this increasing problem and a safe and cost-effective treatment, in contrast to the expensive and potentially toxic antibiotic remedies."

Prof Bolton has now been awarded a grant of £98,000 from the charity Diabetes UK to carry out a randomised controlled trial to find out how successful maggots are in the treatment of MRSA-infected foot ulcers of patients with diabetes compared to two other more traditional treatments.