Following preliminary work by experts at Swansea University, manuka honey could provide the key to a breakthrough treatment for cystic fibrosis patients. Two scientists, Dr. Rowena Jenkins, and Dr. Aled Roberts have discovered that using Manuka honey could provide an antibiotic alternative to treat antimicrobial resistant respiratory infections, especially deadly bacteria found in Cystic Fibrosis (CF) infections.
With the use of tissue from pigs, experts treated grown bacterial infections mimicking those even in CF patients with Manuka honey. The results revealed that it was effective in killing antimicrobial resistant bacteria by 39 percent compared to 29 percent for antibiotics while improving the activity of some antibiotics that were unable to function effectively by themselves, honey and antibiotics combined killed 90 percent of the bacteria tested.
One of the UK's most prevalent life-threatening inherited diseases is CF, with around 10,400 people in the UK suffering according to the CF Trust. A government review led by Lord Jim O'Neil also highlighted the threat of antimicrobial resistance, estimating that a continued rise in resistance by 2050 would lead to 10 million people dying every year from antimicrobial resistant infections.
Among the problem that CF patients suffer from are chronic and long-lasting respiratory infections which often prove fatal due to the presence of certain bacteria that are resistant to many (if not all) the antibiotics that doctors currently have at their disposal.
When doctors cannot remove bacteria from the lungs through antibiotic treatment, as a last resort, they will remove it by providing patients with newly transplanted lungs. Doing this process has some associated risks; however, as the bacteria that caused the original infection can still be found in the upper airway and migrate into the new lungs, thus making the transplant ineffective.
For thousands of years, honey has been used as a medicinal product. More recently, research has shown that Manuka honey is capable of killing antibiotic-resistant bacteria in surface wounds. Funding from The Waterloo Foundation and The Hodge Foundation has allowed the study to look at it as an antibiotic alternative in CF infections.
As a lecturer of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at Swansea University, Dr. Rowena Jenkins said that the preliminary results are promising and should these be replicated in the clinical setting, then this could open up additional treatment options for those with cystic fibrosis infections.
The synergy with antibiotics and absence of resistance seen in the laboratory has allowed the researchers to move into the current clinical trial, investigating the potential for Manuka honey as part of a sinus rinse from alleviating infection in the upper airway.
