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| Honey
for the Treatment of Infections |
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The
results of this research (recently published internationally
in the Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology) show
the importance of selecting the honey used for
medical purposes. Although all honey will
stop the growth of bacteria because of its high
sugar content, when the sugars are diluted by
body fluids this antibacterial action is lost.
The additional antibacterial components (primarily
hydrogen peroxide generated by the glucose oxidase
enzyme in the honey) then become important. Considering
that carbolic disinfectant is usually used with
a phenol concentration of 4-5%, it is evident
that selected honeys can remain antibacterial
when extensively diluted by body fluids.
Another finding in this research was that that
hydrogen peroxide was not the only antibacterial
substance involved in some types of honey. When
testing samples of the honeys with the enzyme
catalase added to remove the hydrogen peroxide,
it was found that only two of the 26 floral types
of honey contained significant levels of this
additional antibacterial activity. In one of these,
vipers bugloss honey, the level of activity was
quite low. In the other, manuka honey, the additional
antibacterial activity was in some samples quite
high, although it is important to note that half
of the 60 samples tested had very low levels or
none of this additional antibacterial activity.
This additional antibacterial activity was considered
to be important enough to warrant further investigation.
As a project for her recently completed M.Sc.
thesis, Dawn Willix compared the antibacterial
activity of an average-level manuka honey with
that of an average-level honey with activity due
to hydrogen peroxide, testing them on seven different
species of bacteria chosen as the ones most commonly
involved in wound infection. The percentage (by
volume) of each type of honey needed to completely
prevent the growth of each species of bacteria
was found to be: |
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Manuka
Honey |
Other
Honey |
| Escherichia
coli |
3.7 |
7.1 |
| Proteus
mirabilis |
7.3
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3.3 |
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Pseudomonas aeruginosa |
10.8
|
6.8 |
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Salmonella typhimurium |
6.0
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4.1 |
| Serratia
marcescens |
6.3 |
4.7 |
| Staphylococcus
aureus |
1.8
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4.9 |
| Streptococcus
pyogenes |
3.6
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2.6 |
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Although
some species are more sensitive to the action
of one type of honey than they are to the other,
on average there is little difference. The most
notable point is that these "average"
honeys can be diluted nearly ten-fold yet still
completely halt the growth of all the major wound-infecting
species of bacteria. Also notable is the finding
that an "average" manuka honey will
still halt staphylococcus aureus when diluted
with 54 times its volume of fluid: this is not
only the most common wound-infecting species,
but is notorious for developing resistance to
antibiotics.
The work has recently been carried further by
microbiologists at Waikato Hospital looking at
the effect of these two honeys on their collection
of strains of MRSA--strains of staphylococcus
aureus that cause ward closures in hospitals because
they are resistant to most or all of the commonly
used antibiotics. All of the strains have been
found to have their growth halted completely by
the honeys diluted to 5-10%. |
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Sweet
William of Earlville Raw Honey
200 West Main Street
Earlville, NY 13332
(315) 691-3000 |
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