Thousand-Year-Old Eye Salve Kills MRSA

An anonymous reader writes: Scientists at the University of Nottingham used a recipe from an ancient medical text to successfully kill golden staph bacteria, also known as MRSA, the superbug commonly found in hospitals. Bald's Leechbook calls for leeks, garlic, brass, wine and other ingredients to create an eye salve for curing an infected eyelash. The salve has been found to be effective in killing the MRSA at least as well any modern remedy.

Comments

Re:It works at least as well...

[Anonymous Coward]

"You won't believe what happens when an ignorant guy reads this useful information!"

Both CA-MRSA and HA-MRSA are resistant to traditional anti-staphylococcal beta-lactam antibiotics, such as cephalexin. CA-MRSA has a greater spectrum of antimicrobial susceptibility, including to sulfa drugs (like co-trimoxazole/trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole), tetracyclines (like doxycycline and minocycline) and clindamycin (for osteomyelitis), but the drug of choice for treating CA-MRSA is now believed to be vancomycin, according to a Henry Ford Hospital Study. HA-MRSA is resistant even to these antibiotics and often is susceptible only to vancomycin. Newer drugs, such as linezolid (belonging to the newer oxazolidinones class) and daptomycin, are effective against both CA-MRSA and HA-MRSA. The Infectious Disease Society of America recommends vancomycin, linezolid, or clindamycin (if susceptible) for treating patients with MRSA pneumonia. Ceftaroline, a fifth generation cephalosporin, is the first beta-lactam antibiotic approved in the US to treat MRSA infections (skin and soft tissue or community acquired pneumonia only).

Vancomycin and teicoplanin are glycopeptide antibiotics used to treat MRSA infections. Teicoplanin is a structural congener of vancomycin that has a similar activity spectrum but a longer half-life. Because the oral absorption of vancomycin and teicoplanin is very low, these agents must be administered intravenously to control systemic infections. Treatment of MRSA infection with vancomycin can be complicated, due to its inconvenient route of administration. Moreover, many clinicians believe that the efficacy of vancomycin against MRSA is inferior to that of anti-staphylococcal beta-lactam antibiotics against methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA).

Several newly discovered strains of MRSA show antibiotic resistance even to vancomycin and teicoplanin. These new evolutions of the MRSA bacterium have been dubbed Vancomycin intermediate-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (VISA). Linezolid, quinupristin/dalfopristin, daptomycin, ceftaroline, and tigecycline are used to treat more severe infections that do not respond to glycopeptides such as vancomycin. Current guidelines recommend daptomycin for VISA bloodstream infections and endocarditis.

Studies suggest that allicin, a compound found in garlic, may prove to be effective in the treatment of MRSA.

Try again, fucktard.

MRSA != Golden Staph

[GrahamCox]

Staphylococcus Aureus, aka "Golden staph" is not exactly synonymous with MRSA. The MR part means 'Methicillin Resistant', which is a mutated form of SA that can't be killed with Methicillin, a common antibiotic. SA is extremely common - it's everywhere, all over your skin, right now. It's only dangerous if it starts to infect a wound and gets into the bloodstream. Most SA will still respond to antibiotics, only the MRSA strain won't. But this strain is still thankfully fairly rare, though it's a growing problem. One solution would be for everyone to stop taking antibiotics for minor ailments such as the common cold which it does nothing for, but adds a lot of unnecessary antibiotics to the environment, thus prompting common bacteria such as SA to evolve into the MRSA form. If we lose the benefit of antibiotics, it will be a disaster, and we can thank all the stupid people for that.

Re: This is great news

[Anonymous Coward]

Your doctor doesn't want you to know aboyt this 500-year-old remedy for venereal disease.

Hint: it's mercury.

Not every old remedy is good for you. If you get into the history of medicine, you'll find lots of old remedies that are harmful.

Re:So, should I just read reddit?

[Ol Olsoc]

The interesting thing about this new concoction is that it is made from leeks, garlic, wine, and bile salts, none of which are necessarily toxic to a human

Don't forget brass is in that mix. A weird mix of both good and bad.

The copper in brass is germicidal, the reference to the MRSA application is in this article, very impressive stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

Now there might even be some reaction to this aspect of brass (probably the zinc in it?) Note this is conjecture on my part at this point

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...

Regardless, this is very good news. All of the botanicals and other ingredients are probably serving as a vehicle to keep the brass from doing harm to the person - an example is getting a cut from a brass object which can be difficult to heal. I suspect they are hard at work on a injectable solution. 100 percent kill within 4 hours is amazing, although it might be hard to do inside the body, perhaps will take a day or two. Plus, it will be much harder to develop resistance to this.

Why is it that people who fancy themselves SO goddamned smart have to sneer at every science article as if the results were obvious, clearly wrong, or deliberately misleading?

It's unfortunate, but confidence is inversely proportional to intelligence. We have a lot of folks in here that should actually be on Yahoo comment boards, because as soon as an article comes out, they are spewing their bullshit, buzzing around it like blowflies on a fresh wildebeest carcass.

And they hate absolutely everything.