A spoonful of honey may solve one of modern medicine's conundrums—how to deal with superbugs, the powerful antibiotics-resistant bacteria that are infesting more and more hospitals around the world.
Peter Molan of the University of Waikato in New Zealand, who presented his team's findings at an international bee congress in Vancouver yesterday, says he and his colleagues have shown that honey is deadly to some of the most worrisome bacteria on the planet—including haemolytic streptococci, which causes flesh-eating disease, and "superbugs" including multiple-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vanomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), which have alarmed medical authorities because there are few drugs left that can stop the highly contagious and deadly bacteria.
"Resistant bacteria are just as susceptible to honey as non-resistant bacteria," says Molan, who collaborated with British scientists who had access to dozens of different "isolates" of superbugs and safe laboratory facilities to test them.
The scientists added varying amounts of honey to the agar on which the bacteria grew in Petri dishes to see how much honey it would take to be lethal. They found that, in addition to killing the superbugs, honey also readily wiped out several strains of bacteria, including acinetobacter and stentotrophomonas, which feequently cause infections in burn units and in patients wearing intravenous lines.
A team of scientist from Australia is reporting similar findings at this week's bee conference, which is being attended by 2,000 beekeepers and researchers.
Honey, "in concentrations that could easily be maintained in a clinical situation", killed 100 different strains of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus and psuedomonas, report Craig Davis and his colleagues from Royal Brisbane Hospital. While the more resistant bacteria required higher concentrations of honey in the agar, the scientists say it was still very effective at killing the microbes.
Molan stresses some types of honey are much more potent than others. Jelly Bush and Manuka honey from Australia and New Zealand are the most potent found so far. But even among Jelly Bush and Manuka honey the antimicrobial activity varies markedly, says Molan. His team is about to start comparing the healing power of different honeys on people with skin ulcers, by saturating wound dressings with different honeys.
Molan, who specializes in antimicrobial agents found in everything from milk to bull semen, has long been fascinated with the healing power of honey, which the ancient Greeks, Chinese, Romans, Egyptians and Assyrians used to treat wounds, as well as gut and eye infections. While he has become convinced there is a potent antimicrobial agent in honey, he has had no success identifying it.
Molan, who specializes in antimicrobial agents found in everything from milk to bull semen, has long been fascinated with the healing power of honey, which the ancient Greeks, Chinese, Romans, Egyptians and Assyrians used to treat wounds, as well as gut and eye infections. While he has become convinced there is a potent antimicrobial agent in honey, he has had no success identifying it.
While North American doctors have been reluctant to start smearing honey on their patients, there is mounting evidence in the medical and scientific journals that ancient people were on to a good thing, says Molan, pointing to recent studies that found that burns and chronic wounds smeared with honey heal faster than those treated conventionally.
North America and Europe may not be ready for sticky bandages, but they are commonly used in Australia and New Zealand where honey is sold for medicinal purposes. Demand is so high that Molan has developed a rating systems honey can be labelled as medicinal when it has been proven to have high levels of antimicrobial activity.
He sees a long list of possible applications, including one for acne; as a school experiment, a group of New Zealand teenagers recruited volunteers who spread a honey-based cream on half their faces for a few weeks. Though not too scientific, Molan says the results were intriguing—the students reported that their acne cleared up much faster on the sweeter side of their faces.