Anglo-Saxon recipe vanquishes MRSA

• Autores: Clare Wilson
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3015, 2015, pág. 14
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Freya Harrison, a microbiologist at the University of Nottingham, UK, and Christina Lee, an Anglo-Saxon scholar, decided to test a recipe from an Old English medical compendium to treat a stye, an infected eyelash follicle. Some of the ingredients, such as copper from the brass vessel, are known to kill bacteria grown in a dish, but it was unclear if they would work on a real infection. After nine days of stewing, the potion had killed all the soil bacteria introduced by the leek and garlic. "That was the first inkling that this crazy idea just might have some use," says Harrison, who presented the research at the Society for General Microbiology conference in Birmingham, UK, this week. The potion was tested on scraps of skin taken from mice infected with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. It killed 90 per cent of the bacteria. Unexpectedly, the ingredients had little effect unless they were all brought together.