Honey Remedy Could Save Limbs

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Honey Remedy Could Save Limbs

 

By Brandon Keim|

 

When Jennifer Eddy first saw an ulcer on the left foot of her

patient, an elderly diabetic man, it was pink and quarter-sized.

Fourteen months later, drug-resistant bacteria had made it an

unrecognizable black mess.

Doctors tried everything they knew -- and failed. After five

hospitalizations, four surgeries and regimens of antibiotics, the man

had lost two toes. Doctors wanted to remove his entire foot.

" He preferred death to amputation, and everybody agreed he was going

to die if he didn't get an amputation, " said Eddy, a professor at the

University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

With standard techniques exhausted, Eddy turned to a treatment used

by ancient Sumerian physicians, touted in the Talmud and praised by

Hippocrates: honey. Eddy dressed the wounds in honey-soaked gauze. In

just two weeks, her patient's ulcers started to heal. Pink flesh

replaced black. A year later, he could walk again.

" I've used honey in a dozen cases since then, " said Eddy. " I've yet

to have one that didn't improve. "

Eddy is one of many doctors to recently rediscover honey as medicine.

Abandoned with the advent of antibiotics in the 1940s and

subsequently disregarded as folk quackery, a growing set of clinical

literature and dozens of glowing anecdotes now recommend it.

Most tantalizingly, honey seems capable of combating the growing

scourge of drug-resistant wound infections, especially methicillin-

resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, the infamous flesh-eating

strain. These have become alarmingly more common in recent years,

with MRSA alone responsible for half of all skin infections treated

in U.S. emergency rooms. So-called superbugs cause thousands of

deaths and disfigurements every year, and public health officials are

alarmed.

Though the practice is uncommon in the United States, honey is

successfully used elsewhere on wounds and burns that are unresponsive

to other treatments. Some of the most promising results come from

Germany's Bonn University Children's Hospital, where doctors have

used honey to treat wounds in 50 children whose normal healing

processes were weakened by chemotherapy.

The children, said pediatric oncologist Arne Simon, fared

consistently better than those with the usual applications of iodine,

antibiotics and silver-coated dressings. The only adverse effects

were pain in 2 percent of the children and one incidence of eczema.

These risks, he said, compare favorably to iodine's possible thyroid

effects and the unknowns of silver -- and honey is also cheaper.

" We're dealing with chronic wounds, and every intervention which

heals a chronic wound is cost effective, because most of those

patients have medical histories of months or years, " he said.

While Eddy bought honey at a supermarket, Simon used Medihoney, one

of several varieties made from species of Leptospermum flowers found

in New Zealand and Australia.

Honey, formed when bees swallow, digest and regurgitate nectar,

contains approximately 600 compounds, depending on the type of flower

and bee. Leptospermum honeys are renowned for their efficacy and

dominate the commercial market, though scientists aren't totally sure

why they work.

" All honey is antibacterial, because the bees add an enzyme that

makes hydrogen peroxide, " said Peter Molan, director of the Honey

Research Unit at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. " But we

still haven't managed to identify the active components. All we know

is (the honey) works on an extremely broad spectrum. "

Attempts in the lab to induce a bacterial resistance to honey have

failed, Molan and Simon said. Honey's complex attack, they said,

might make adaptation impossible.

Two dozen German hospitals are experimenting with medical honeys,

which are also used in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

In the United States, however, honey as an antibiotic is nearly

unknown. American doctors remain skeptical because studies on honey

come from abroad and some are imperfectly designed, Molan said.

In a review published this year, Molan collected positive results

from more than 20 studies involving 2,000 people. Supported by

extensive animal research, he said, the evidence should sway the

medical community -- especially when faced by drug-resistant bacteria.

" In some, antibiotics won't work at all, " he said. " People are dying

from these infections. "

Commercial medical honeys are available online in the United States,

and one company has applied for Food and Drug Administration

approval. In the meantime, more complete clinical research is

imminent. The German hospitals are documenting their cases in a

database built by Simon's team in Bonn, while Eddy is conducting the

first double-blind study.

" The more we keep giving antibiotics, the more we breed these

superbugs. Wounds end up being repositories for them, " Eddy said. " By

eradicating them, honey could do a great job for society and to

improve public health. "

 

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Caldecott

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