- CHICAGO (UPI) - Microbiology researchers said Wednesday the active
ingredient in garlic combats two of the nastiest antibiotic resistant
microbes faced by doctors and patients.
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- The ingredient, a substance know
as allicin, has been found effective in killing off
methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus -- a microbe that has been
especially troubling in skin and soft tissue wounds -- and in inhibiting
growth of vancomycin-resistant enterococci, an intestinal bacteria that
causes considerable illness and deaths in hospital settings.
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- "Allicin simply blows enormous
holes through MRSA,' said Ronald Cutler, senior lecturer in microbiology
at the University of East London, England. He has formulated allicin
into skin products such as creams and soaps and has achieved success in
destroying the microbes in laboratory tests.
-
- He said he also tested the cream
on healthy volunteers -- including himself -- and "we have found
absolutely no adverse reactions."
-
- Cutler, and his commercial venture
Allicin International Ltd., are beginning human testing with the allicin
cream on patients with stubborn skin infections caused by MRSA.
-
- "What happens in a test tube may
not occur when it is used in humans," cautioned Dr. Jaya Prakash,
chairperson of the department of pathology, microbiology and public
health at National University of Health Sciences, Lombard, Ill.
-
- Prakash is experimenting with
allicin in thwarting VRE.
-
- "We have shown that we can inhibit
the growth of these bacteria with allicin. Some of the isolates are more
stubborn than others," she said, but at 150 micrograms of allicin the
bacteria cannot proliferate.
-
- She said humans can ingest about
25 grams a day of garlic without ill effects, and that much garlic
contains about 15 milligrams of allicin -- about 100 times more than
what she used to control VRE.
-
- Methicillin and vancomycin both
are powerful antibiotics that for many years were considered among the
last medical defenses against vicious microbes such as S. aureus. In
recent years, however, both S. aureus and enterococci have developed
mutations that allow the bugs to escape the killing power of these
antibiotics. Both organisms are multi-drug resistant.
-
- The studies were presented at the
annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy,
a meeting sponsored by the American Society of Microbiology in
Chicago.
-
- In Prakash's study, allicin was
tested against two normal strains of Enterococci fecalis and 24
vancomycin-resistant strains of E. fecalis. The allicin concentrations
stopped growth of the microbes within four hours.
-
- Cutler said concentrations of
allicin at levels of 32 parts per million in a liquid or cream
formulation were sufficient to inhibit MRSA. The cream he tested on
himself contained 500 parts per million of allicin.
-
- Prakash said that before calling the
substance "Allicin Wonderdrug" a lot of clinical testing still must be
accomplished.
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