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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.
"You won't believe what this weird thousand year old trick can do!..."
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"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Killing bugs is easy. It's not killing everything else in the vicinity that makes it hard.
That's why antibiotics were invented in the first place.
Only a lab test, yes.
And at one point, "chewing willow bark" was just a crazy home remedy, until a lab test discovered that willow bark contains salicin, which your body converts to salicylic acid... which is just un-acetylated aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid).
They test these things in labs, and discover that, "Hey, there's something to this that seems to work."
Then they do MORE lab tests, to discover the mechanism of action.
Then, they do even MORE lab tests to determine if the mechanism of action can be delivered in a way that is deadly to the microbe but NOT deadly to the infected person.
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 (people who have had their gall bladder removed actually take bile salt supplements), and three of which are actually considered very tasty additions to many dishes we usually eat. That suggests that the active ingredient or mechanism might actually be helpful in humans. Contrast that with ingesting household bleach, which usually ends with you dead on the floor in a puddle of your own shit and piss, or applying chlorine bleach to an open wound infected with MRSA, which may not kill you, but certainly will leave chemical burns on top of your infection.
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? For fuck's sake, stop trying to show off how smart you are - you're not that smart, and you're definitely not that amusing.
Killing MRSA is easy. Trivial, even. You can do it with steam, alcohol, or dozens of other disinfecting agents. The key is to be able to kill it inside an infected individual, without also killing the host (or damaging a significant amount of the host's tissues). That's why we use antibiotics in the first place. While it wasn't entirely clear from skimming TFA, it very much sounds like this is (currently, at least) only a topical treatment (i.e. it's applied to the skin). It might be superior to other modern topical treatments in some cases, but I personally doubt it.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
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.
Really - should I quit even coming here for news? I haven't seen one item this week that wasn't on reddit for a day or more.
We took a poll, and everyone wanted you to stop coming here, and stay on reddit. Thanks for the fish.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
One person gets it. Wow.
The interesting part of this article is that this is a concoction that wouldn't ordinarily be thought of as an effective antibiotic. No one will be compounding leeks and garlic and prescribing it. Something interesting is occurring here. Once we discover what it is it could lead to some interesting new classes of drugs.
Its the copper and brass in the mixture. Copper is a germicide of some worth.The other stuff probably soothes the wound.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.