1,000-year-old onion and garlic eye remedy kills MRSA
bbc.co.ukI'm telling you, 10-20 years from now we're going to get garlic and onion resistant MRSA.
Hopefully it will be less efficient in other aspects. Adaptions like that tend to have costs. Even if not, even if it turns out to make it more efficient, we are buying 10-20 years. Lots of things can happen in that time.
Like companies outlawing growing your own garlic and onions because someone somewhere found that you can make a moderately effective mace with those ingredients, or because they can be abused (war on drugs), or because terrorists.
You might raise issue with the idea of a corporation outlawing something. I say look at the way the justice system currently works and tell me they couldnt buy the result they wanted.
Just in time for FDA "approval"!
This is the unfortunate reality.
Maybe, maybe not. Keep in mind that as a biological actor, garlic and other allicin-containing substances have the ability to adapt generationally to meet changes in bacteria. That's an advantage that is not innate to our own antibiotics.
Also, that allicin kills MRSA is not news by any measure. Here's an article from 2008:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/health/article127...
They don't just magically adapt because they are being used. To adapt they would have to be attacked by bacteria, and only the stronger ones survive, but MRSA doesn't attack onions.
They could adapt because humans only grow the ones that are the better of the batch at doing what we want them to do. I can't see it working as fast as bacteria, but it could be another option.
It seems like it should be at pretty much the same speed, if an equal size amount of garlic plants were being attacked by MRSA. Doesn't matter if natural selection of human-guided selection does the culling.
I suppose it might be expensive to grow lots and lots of garlic plants and test them all for efficacy, though.
I don't think it's correct to assume the speeds are equal. Genetic mutations propagate across viruses and plants at very different speeds.
A generation of bacteria is way shorter lived than a generation of garlic. It would depend on how much the garlic was used though I'm pretty sure, though you might need to talk to an actual biologist for details.
Also, unless garlic defended itself from MRSA by killing it human guided selection would be better, what if the garlic is sneaky and figures out another way to survive that doesn't help humans.
The story was more about the combination of the ingredients called "eye salve." Which includes more than just garlic, but also wine and cow bile.
Why? People have known about the antibacterial and antiviral properties of allium for hundreds of years, so it's not like anything is going to magically change.
Penicillin mold has existed for millions of years, but it was widespread therapeutic use in humans that caused extensive resistance. Humans are the ecological version of "magic".
right, but they'll lose their resistance to our current antibiotics, so we can just go back and forth between those :)
10-20 year win!
Anecdotal. But when I was young I suffered from intense ear-aches. Eventually my Mom capitulated to my Grandmothers suggestion and put garlic cloves in olive oil and poured into my ear. Within a few hours of treatment those ear-aches would disappear completely.
Years later I researched and found out about allicin and its presence in freshly crushed garlic.
In fact there are now theories that many of the cooking practices of "marinating in crushed garlic" was just as much to do about anti-bacterial effects as culinary.
> put garlic cloves in olive oil and poured into my ear.
While not applicable to your specific use, I'll point out for general knowledge that garlic + olive oil can lead to the growth of Clostridium botulinum, aka the Botulism causing bacteria. This more commonly occurs when making garlic infused olive oil, since the botulinum needs time to grow. Hence why it probably didn't matter for your grandmother's usage; not enough time for the concoction to become dangerous. But this is one of those strange facts that it's good know, in case someone decides to make homemade infused olive oil for their meals.
Interesting - wasn't aware of that. I wonder how hardy those spores are -- that is, if they're as much of a problem with dried garlic, as with fresh?
One easy options seems to be to opt for garlic vinegar instead, as the vinegar is acidic, and doesn't allow the bacteria to thrive?
http://food-hacks.wonderhowto.com/how-to/make-garlic-infused...
edit, see also: http://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/uc_davis/uc_davis_garlic.p...
Good to know. Otherwise crushing garlic in onion is a very time-efficient when you're doing food :). But perhaps if you heat it it's not much of a problem.
Isn't that what happens to infants when fed honey?
Olive oil is still often used to clean out ear wax (which does cause intense ear aches). Are you sure it was the garlic and not the oil?
See eg http://www.uhs.nhs.uk/ourservices/ear,noseandthroat/audiolog... (for a non-woo, non-commercial reference).
In fact this used to be pretty much the only use for olive oil in the UK - before the mid-1950s, 'continental' cookery was unusual and olive oil was generally unavailable except through a pharmacist as an ear cleaner. http://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Food-in-Britain-in-the-...
It does have some anti-microbial action but it's known that the glycosinolates (found in onion family but also many other vegetables) have definitive antibacterial properties.
Yes, even if previous generations did not have the wealth of knowledge we now possess - It's not that they were all stupid. Hundreds of years ago there wasn't much other choice than to use your surroundings to survive. No pharmacy around there.
The key difference is that they didn't have a good mechanism for sifting the wheat from the chaff: in addition to doing some things that are actually helpful, some things that seemed to work are actually harmful/dangerous (eg. bloodletting).
It's funny that we are still doing the same thing. Chemotherapy is hoping that we kill the cancer before we kill the body.
It's like high-tech bloodletting with more research and a better track record.
Chemotherapy is a research-backed approach that has been constantly refined since it was first used roughly 100 years ago.
Bloodletting is a theory-based approach and was, as far as we know, in continuous use for thousands of years despite being ineffective for almost every single condition.
The key difference is precisely the research and constant refinement, not any particular mechanism of action.
Bloodletting is not ineffective at all. If you have a dangerous bacterial infection, and have no sulfa drugs and no modern antibiotics, bloodletting is a good idea. You are reducing iron availability. Human tissue can cope with low iron. Bacteria need quite a bit of it critically to reproduce.
On the other hand, you're weakening your patient's body in a way that likely isn't good for their immune system.
Sounds like Chemo
In theory Chemotherapy is a research-backed approach. In practice it is simply the best we have for those that reject proper nutrition and exercise.
For example, Colon cancer has a 1.8% success rate with Chemotherapy and Lung cancer has a 1% success rate.
That is pretty abysmal research.
>In theory Chemotherapy is a research-backed approach. In practice it is simply the best we have for those that reject proper nutrition and exercise.
Cancer is the result of DNA damage, which you can get from viruses, chemicals (of all types), sunlight, and even background radiation. Plus, I suspect, random errors in DNA transcription. That's why your body has multiple overlapping systems to detect and destroy cancerous cells.
The idea you'll never get cancer if you just eat right and exercise is a fool's hope - if you don't die of something else first you'll get cancer.
And yes, chemo isn't ideal, but it will normally stretch your life out some. It's certainly not the best we have in all cases - there are targeted drugs for some cancers now.
What kinds of cancer does proper nutrition and exercise cure?
Well, on average, it does give you more time, that is of better quality than chemotherapy.
Not the one Steve Jobs got.
parent said proper nutrition, not "faith-based fruitarianism".
This is not at all the same thing. Ancient medicine was pre-scientific method and therefore they were throwing things at the wall and seeing what would stick with no eye to all the problems of informal research (confirmation bias, survivor's bias, correlation!=causation, etc.)
Modern Chemotherapy isn't someone just presuming something works through informal testing, void of any understanding of the fundamental mechanism by which it works.
It is a necessary evil. Chemotherapy is more akin to amputation of irretrievable mortified flesh than to blood letting.
Medicine did not start advancing rapidly until around 1800 when people first started using statistics to determine what worked and what didn't, rather than anecdotal evidence.
Not stupid, but they either didn't understand or relied on the placebo effect and didn't perform experiments that were actually useful at distinguishing helpful from harmful or useless medicines - AND communicate that information to others. When an ancient remedy turns out to be useful, it's not useful until we rediscover that it actually works. The idea of science and sorting out mysticism from reality is fairly new in most of the world. In China, doctors in public hospitals still prescribe untested herbal remedies and diagnose diseases without any idea of the effectiveness of what they're doing. Patients just trust authority, tradition and popular belief. You could argue that the same is true to some extent in the west today too - see general "have some antibiotics" prescriptions, and cough and cold medicine.
Forgetting that Chemists and Apothecaries existed hundreds of years ago or did I mis-interpret?
It's worth noting that not all ye olde home remedies are unduly ignored. In my great-grandmother's time, kerosene was seen as a wonder drug, put on everything to heal it. They even once put it in a baby's eyes to cure blindness.
"They found the remedy killed up to 90% of MRSA bacteria"
I don't think that's strong enough to be useful. This might be interesting if they can figure out the mechanism and use it to create a stronger antibiotic, but for the stage this is actually at, they're really overselling it.
> but for the stage this is actually at, they're really overselling it.
What exactly is it you think they're "selling?" I thought the article was focusing more on the historical significance of this, in particular how good medical knowledge was 1,000 years ago.
You seem to be under the impression that they're suggesting this as a possible cure for MRSA. But the article never stated that. They might be able to look at the mechanism and develop something which could help us fight MRSA, but I highly doubt they would use this exact 1K year old recipe 1:1 in a modern hospital (and, again, the article never stated otherwise).
Seems like your criticism is largely based on things they never said nor claimed. Essentially you're critical of a strawman.
> how good medical knowledge was 1,000 years ago.
Survivor bias.
If it could be employed - it is much better than nothing. So if the immune system is somewhat functioning it may be enough. And with the amount of garlic eaten - the LD50 of the stuff will be insanely high.
And the antibiotic properties of garlic are wildly known.
Although it might not be the 99.99% that we expect from our antibacterial products, this is part of that 0.01% that it doesn't kill. It is pretty amazing to me how we find such amazing things that were discovered during what most often think of as a lesser time. Although they didn't talk about it, I am sure that they are going to research it further to find out what part of it is so effective against MRSA. They probably got this published so someone who has the money to support the research further could provide funding.
Opposed to antibiotics which are not currently working at all? I think 90% is better than 0%. It could be the difference between life and death. Killing most of the MRSA bacteria could actually reduce its severity. Obviously I am not a scientist though and I am purely assuming things here based on my own logic.
Well then, hopefully some pharma company will create their own patented blend called ONGARTA (TM) that they'll shepard through FDA trials so doctors can prescribe it.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/15/fish-now-by-prescriptio...
That article's not very convincing..
Fish oil you get at Walgreens isn't regulated by the FDA and can be dramatically different than what the label claims (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25604397). Moreover, the $30/bottle fish oil is very low concentration, often 20% - 30% PUFAs, and typically very highly oxidized.
Lovaza is 90% ethyl ester PUFAs and has been thoroughly tested to demonstrate safety and efficacy (http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2009/021...).
Will the $30/bottle Walgreen's Omega-3s be pretty close in effect to Lovaza? Probably.. If you take 3x as many to match dosage and if you don't mind the fishy smell and biproducts due to the AV/PV levels being off the charts.. but there's still no guarantee.
ONGARTA(TM) may cause bad breath and socially awkward situations. Ask your doctor if ONGARTA(TM) is right for you.
I'm unclear as to why or how this is entirely useful. This article is probably missing some of the key findings that would make it interesting. In reality, killing a MRSA bacteria culture is trivial and could be done by a child. The real usefulness of this discovery would be if this liquid could be safely ingested and produce antibiotic activity while in the body. Pouring something like bleach, gasoline, hydrochloric acid, liquid nitrogen on MRSA cultures will also kill them. But, but these things won't help treat a MRSA infection in the body.
The article seems to suggest it is mostly of historical interest. The researchers seem impressed by its effectiveness for a medicine of that time.
It's of further interest because it seems to have come out of a tradition of medicine that was based on something similar to the scientific method.
Given the ingredients, one would assume that it's at least safe to ingest. Whether it's actually effective or not is an open question given the lack of data in the article.
I don't know about you, but if I was in the hospital with a resistant strain of staph, I wouldn't go for the gasoline or liquid nitrogen treatment.
Fact is that MRSA and others just adapt too quickly to our antibiotics to the point where there are strains in the wild without any antibiotic agents that affect them. That's usually a death sentence.
If there's something else out there that can be turned into a drug that's safe for humans, that's another tool doctors have to save lives.
Oh for goodness sake. This isn't a medical trial of a new anti-MRSA drug. This is an interesting piece of living history research into Anglo-Saxon medical practices.
Bald's Leechbook is fascinating for many reasons. One in particular they refer to in the article - the local Anglo-Saxon remedies are in general lacking in theory and so more or less evidence based. Later medieval medicine was possibly in many ways worse - Roman and Greek ideas of the four humours were imported and applied as received truth. Later medicine was much more likely to take the approach of "Who are ya going to believe? Aristotle or your lyin' eyes?"
Anglo-Saxon medicine had no overarching theory to apply. So their salves and potions and magic incantations tended to be adhoc, complicated, and, occasionally, actually worked.
"They were 'astonished' to find it almost completely wiped out staphylococcus aureus, otherwise known as MRSA."
Not all S. aureus is MRSA; wondering if this is just poor phrasing or if I'm misunderstanding something.
My guess is that the article is written by idiots who have no business attempting to popularize science they don't understand even the barest outlines of.
Use of the word 'idiot' usually heralds an intemperate blanket comment.
What popularization? The article merely and briefly reports what the researchers said.'Experts from the university's microbiology team recreated the remedy and then tested it on large cultures of MRSA'.
Where's the lack of understanding on the part of the BBC team? The effect of the mixture may be found to be of no significant account (90% is not much) but that's another story that's down to the researchers.
The stigmata of the lack of understanding were the item you mention (thinking that 90% is a large reduction in an exponentially-growing population) and the item mentioned upthread (conflating S. aureus in general with MRSA, an error which has apparently been silently fixed in the article now). But those are the things they said. We don’t know what things the reporters didn’t say because they didn’t understand that they were important when the researchers said them. Perhaps, for example, the researchers addressed the question mentioned elsewhere in the thread of whether you can actually put this salve in your eyes without burning your corneas, or sterilize it and inject it into your body; or whether it has some activity transdermally and could thus perhaps be used to treat cellulitis. And I wouldn’t be surprised if someone decides to mix up this stuff from the article and blinds themselves with garlic.
And that, in a nutshell, is why I’m intemperate about ignorant journalists blathering about medical science.
Was the article edited? It now reads "They were "astonished" to find it almost completely wiped out methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, otherwise known as MRSA."
I tried to check http://newsdiffs.org/ but the bbc.co.uk portion seems to be broken.
Just want to make a note for you guys on allicin and garlic. Allicin doesn't exist in garlic, but is created when alliin and a heat-sensitive enzyme called alliinase come in contact with each other.
They do not mix until you slice, chew, cut or press the garlic and rupture the barriers between them. They key is to wait 10 minutes after this process has occurred until you cook it, or you will remove most of the benefit of allicin. For example, putting freshly chopped garlic in the microwave for 30 seconds will take away 90% of the potential allicin content due to the heat destroying alliinase.
Is it hard to kill MRSA in culture? Bleach will do it, for example, and I bet 100% alcohol would too. It's only resistant to known antibiotics, after all--not immortal.
I think the news here is historical (hey this crazy recipe works), not medical (hey this stuff might be better than anything we already know how to do).
As a kid I made "ant poison" by mixing various household chemicals and water in a gallon jug. Then I'd pour it on ants. Sure enough, they died. Mostly by drowning, but still. It worked.
I wouldn't be comfortable buying a pesticide based on that research, however.
Reminds me of saying that best way to kill HIV is with AK-47, now how do you kill while leaving carrier alive - that's another question.
Earlier today:
It does not tell us if it has some side-effects, like making you blind. Chlorine probably also kills MSRA in a petri dish.
Anecdotal evidence of course, but I am happy to confirm I have ingested all four ingredients on numerous occasions and am still alive (as of the time of this posting).
I know a cousin of a friend of mine who also ingested these ingredients. Still anecdotal, though ;-)
Injested or put in his eye?
oh, it's all perfectly in jest.
The article has no information about how this is supposed to be used.
Can you inject this into the bloodstream to clear an MRSA infection?
If not, then it's only useful as a topical antiseptic, which isn't newsworthy, since bleach, Lysol and various alcohols also kill MRSA.
Very curious how important it is to get the wine from that particular vineyard
That's like using natural lemon juice to kill the bacteria that cause pink eye.. great remedy: squeeze lemon juice in your eye (yes it will sting and burn for a hot minute until you... ) run your eye under luke-warm to semi-hot water, and within 2-3 days, no more pink eye. Antibiotics can take up to 10 days to rid pink eye.
Are there any clinical studies that support that claim? A quick Google search only turns up a bunch of specious "home remedy" sites, and an equally suspicious doctor denouncing the practice.
The problem is that I don't think there is currently a possibility that a clinical study for this could be funded. Government has all but withdrawn from late stage studies and no company has anything to gain.
Thousands of years of usage isn't enough of a clinical study?
Very difficult to take a lot of western medicine seriously when a huge amount of the research is funded by organisations with vested interested.
You can just use warm tea bags on your eyes while resting in bed for 10-20 minutes 2x day. No more pink eye in less than 3 days. (at least it worked like charm for me)
I thought...wth? these are first ingredients in every curry we make ... every day. EDIT: I meant onion & garlic
Also turmeric which many uses in folk medicine for stomach and liver ailments.
We are insignificantly smarter today than we were 1000 years ago. Take a baby from 1000 years ago and bring him to the year 2015, and he will probably be able to fit into modern society perfectly fine.
The discoveries we make today aren't because we're smarter, but rather that we have significantly more knowledge to work from.
That's not what I was saying. All I was saying is that people 1000 years ago were innately as smart logically as you are today. I'm not talking about a posteriori knowledge.
And technology to work with
Infant mortality rates are significantly lower in 2015 than they were 1000 years ago, so you'd definitely be doing him a favor.
What? You think humans are born fully socialized? Why wouldn't a baby be able to fit in?
> A 1,000-year-old treatment for eye infections could hold the key to killing antibiotic-resistant superbugs, experts have said.
The problem is that when this is used frequently, the superbugs will evolve to survive to this treatment. If this result is confirmed, it will be good to have another alternative, but the new alternative will not last forever. (Perhaps 1000 years ago, there was a garlic-and-onion-resistant-superbug, and with the years they lost the mutation to survive this treatment.)
> They found the remedy killed up to 90% of MRSA bacteria and believe it is the effect of the recipe rather than one single ingredient.
Perhaps it a combination of a few drugs present in the ingredients, that can be produced artificially
A couple of points:
1. "Superbug" is just a modern construct of something that's been happening (albeit at a slower pace) since bacteria - and human pathogens in general - have existed. Garlic (and relatives) have faced this for just as long.
2. Similar to the adaption of bacterium in #1, the biological victims have adapted. That is, after all, while garlic has large amounts of allicin - a wide-spectrum antibiotic - in the first place.
If we better contain our treatments so that they do not pollute the environment I would think the longevity of any new drug should increase. The wholesale use of some antibiotics in farming is one area where the leakage occurs from
... At least until doctors start prescribing onion and garlic for everything, then we'll have to find something else that works.
Reminded me of http://goo.gl/SOecWG
Anyone know where I can buy 1,000-year-old onions?
This is tripe.
Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1217/
It's funny you call it tripe since it calls for cow stomach in the recipe.
I was assuming it was good wordplay. The downvotes say otherwise.
"They found the remedy killed up to 90% of MRSA bacteria and believe it is the effect of the recipe rather than one single ingredient."
Believe? Don't you want to like, um, test that? You know, science.
This whole thing stinks of research grant bait.
One line up?
"In each case, they tested the individual ingredients against the bacteria, as well as the remedy and a control solution."
The article states that they did test individual ingredients vs the combination. So I'm going to assume they use the term "believe" as a layman replacement for "confident up to x sigmas".