Honey as an Antibiotic?
As an undergraduate at Cornell, I took a course called "Bee Keeping" mostly because it had the reputation of being a “gut” course (i.e., easy to ace) and I had a passing interest in entomological microbiology. To this day, I will tell you that it is one of the best courses that I have taken in my academic career. It was taught by a practicing bee keeper who maintained hives in Florida during the winter and in Ithaca during the summer (not surprisingly the course was taught in the Spring semester so that his bees could pollinate the local crops).
Not only did we learn a lot about honey bee biology and social insect behavior, we also learned a great deal about honey and its virtues (we even got to sample different types of honey from time to time). One of honey’s lesser known properties is that it is sterile. This is because honey is extremely hygroscopic and has high concentrations of fructose, thereby preventing the growth of bacteria. These properties led me to wonder in those days whether honey would be an effective antibiotic in certain situations.
Over the next 30 years or so, I had all but forgotten about the possible use of honey as an antibacterial. Then, much to my surprise, I came across a recent Canadian study which suggests that honey may be useful to treat a variety of infections. Apparently, honey is surprisingly effective in treating bacterial biofilms which are increasingly implicated in the etiology of many chronic skin, mucosal and wound infections. Previous studies showed that honey is effective in wound healing. The researchers who conducted the study also suggested that a “honey rinse” might be effective for treating "stubborn ear, nose and throat infections."
Interestingly, not all of the honey that was tested exhibited potent antibacterial properties. Canadian clover and buckwheat honey didn’t exhibit any antibacterial properties at all. This suggests that the plant nectars that the bees use to make honey might influence the antibiotic properties of various honeys. It is important to note that the results of these experiments are very preliminary and additional studies will definitely be required to support or refute the use of honey as an antibiotic. Nevertheless, I thought the results were exciting and worth mentioning.
Until next time….don't forget to eat your honey!
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting (try beekeeping…its lucrative these days)!!!!!!
A friend of mine accidentally gashed his leg on an open dishwasher door and thought nothing of it for several weeks until he noticed that the wound wasn’t healing and it hurt really badly. He eventually went to the emergency room at a local, where the ER docs cultured the wound and sent him home with a prescription for oral antibiotics. The antibiotics stopped working several days later and he wound up in another local hospital–this time he was admitted and the spent the next 5 days on a variety of intravenous antibiotics. Despite the treatment (they could not find the right antibiotic combination at first because they never recultured the wound) his leg turned black from his ankle to his knee and they almost had to amputate. He is back at home now and will be treated with a regimen of iv antibiotics for the next 6 weeks or so. I talked with him last week and I learned that his leg wound is still not completely healed and the infectious disease docs are worried!
