Re: [DIYbio] diy MRSA antibiotic using garlic, reproduced in lab

That news headline was spectacularly out of scale with the significance of the news. Bile salts, red wine (alcohol), allicin and various other volotiles, and in-vitro or on topical application it kills bacteria. AMAZING! Except that topical alcohol alone will achieve the same with less complexity and fewer chances of allergy or skin reaction.

This doesn't amaze so much for external uses, because your options for external treatment are so much broader already. Even for eyes, you can be a bit more brutal than you can be with a pill, and there are whole classes of antibiotic that can be used externally that are inappropriate or useless for internal uses.

The problem with internal antibiotics isn't killing MRSA, that's trivial. It's killing MRSA and co *inside the body* using agents that are effective, selective, and safe. If you eat that cocktail it's highly unlikely to be effective, it'll be at least partially selective, and it's likely to be safe, by my guesstimate. It's hardly a blockbuster, but it's interesting to see the kinds of work they did back when distillation wasn't commonplace and poultices needed that extra oomph to make up for insufficient alcohol.

On 01/04/15 01:04, leaking pen wrote:

Yeah.. I'm not sure what the surprise is.  It reminds me of George
Carlin bit about "happens to be black".   Allicin is one of the first
sulfa antibiotics we used, and is a direct extract from Garlic.  With
the salts and such that are in there, you're basically breaking down the
fats and protiens and extracting it, and Sulfa drugs have already been
shown to be amazingly effective on Mersa (and yet no one prescribes
it... sigh)

The wonder of the whole thing is how detailed the process is for the
time frame, not that it works.

On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 4:46 PM, Jonathan Cline <jcline@ieee.org

<mailto:jcline@ieee.org>> wrote:

    Today's big pharma ain't got nuthin on 9th century Anglo-Saxon diybio?



    ""A one thousand year old Anglo-Saxon remedy for eye infections
    which originates from a manuscript in the British Library has been
    found to kill the modern-day superbug MRSA in an unusual research
    collaboration at The University of Nottingham.""

    Bald's eye salve [as listed in BBC news article, see ref below]:

    Equal amounts of garlic and another allium (onion or leek), finely
    chopped and crushed in a mortar for two minutes.

    Add 25ml (0.87 fl oz) of English wine - taken from a historic
    vineyard near Glastonbury.

    Dissolve bovine salts in distilled water, add and then keep chilled
    for nine days at 4C.



    ...
    "" Early results on the 'potion', tested in vitro at Nottingham and
    backed up by mouse model tests at a university in the United States,
    are, in the words of the US collaborator, "astonishing". The
    solution has had remarkable effects on Methicillin-resistant
    Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) which is one of the most
    antibiotic-resistant bugs costing modern health services billions. ""

    Ref:  University press release
    http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/pressreleases/2015/march/ancientbiotics---a-medieval-remedy-for-modern-day-superbugs.aspx


    BBC News article

    http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-32117815

    """ A 1,000-year-old treatment for eye infections could hold the key
    to killing antibiotic-resistant superbugs, experts have said.
    Scientists recreated a 9th Century Anglo-Saxon remedy using onion,
    garlic and part of a cow's stomach. They were "astonished" to find
    it almost completely wiped out methicillin-resistant staphylococcus
    aureus, otherwise known as MRSA. Their findings will be presented at
    a national microbiology conference. The remedy was found in Bald's
    Leechbook - an old English manuscript containing instructions on
    various treatments held in the British Library. Anglo-Saxon expert
    Dr Christina Lee, from the University of Nottingham, translated the
    recipe for an "eye salve", which includes garlic, onion or leeks,
    wine and cow bile."""
    ...

    "" The team's findings will be presented at the Annual Conference of
    the Society for General Microbiology, in Birmingham."



    ## Jonathan Cline

    ##jcline@ieee.org  <mailto:jcline@ieee.org>
    ## Mobile:+1-805-617-0223  <tel:%2B1-805-617-0223>
    ########################



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