Manuka honey is becoming the new wonder drug for a wide range of ailments. Conor Pope reports on the honey from New Zealand that has become the buzzword for treatment here
A spoonful of manuka honey doesn't just help the medicine go down, it is becoming the actual medicine and one which is useful in treating a growing number of conditions from the simply irritating to the potentially fatal.
The honey, from New Zealand, is still relatively unknown in Ireland but it is commonplace in its home country and Australia and is now being used in a growing number of British hospitals to treat an increasingly wide array of ailments.
Research has shown that manuka, made by bees that collect pollen from the manuka bush, Leptospermum scoparium, which grows wild in New Zealand, can be used to treat a multitude of conditions including MRSA, gum disease, chest infections, sore throats, eye sores and even aid the recovery of post-operative cancer patients.
Earlier this summer, a cancer hospital in Manchester, the Christie Hospital, said it intended to use manuka to treat patients recovering from surgery. The hospital is using the honey to try to reduce inflammation in mouth and throat cancer patients and is also optimistic it may reduce the spread of MRSA.
Although mouth and throat cancer survival rates have improved in recent years, one side effect which has proved resistant to traditional medications is mucositis, an inflammation and infection of the lining tissue of patients' mouths and throats.
The study in the Christie Hospital is examining whether manuka can reduce the inflammation caused by the condition and prevent further infection.
Doctors elsewhere have also reported success in using the honey to treat other types of cancerous wounds and for special dressings on patients with wounds or ulcers resulting from radiation therapy.
The honey is also being used at the Manchester Royal Infirmary where 60 patients are taking part in a study to see if it can prevent infections which can be resistant to antibiotics and in 2004 manuka honey wound dressings and sterilised manuka honey creams were licensed for use in NHS hospitals.
The Manchester study is not the first to examine the healing properties of manuka. Researchers at Aintree Hospital in Liverpool and the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, have already established that it can help combat MRSA while a study published in the European Journal of Medical Research found it had an 85 per cent success rate in treating infected Caesarean and hysterectomy wounds.
Routine treatments are significantly less successful and have a 50 per cent success rate.
A study on the honey's powers is also being carried out in Ireland. Georgina Gethin is a Sligo-based tissue viability nurse who is close to completing a PhD on the use of manuka in chronic wound healing. She has done full-scale trials in hospitals in Sligo, Dublin and Limerick and while the results of the trials are not yet in, she has been impressed with its efficiency.
"We have been using it in Sligo General Hospital and have had very good results but the full study should determine how effective it is," she says.
As part of the study she has used the honey to treat venous leg ulcers. Some 24,000 people in Ireland suffer from the ulcers and 3,000 new cases are diagnosed each year, and anything that helps to tackle the problem is to be welcomed.
"I think it has a role to play in modern wound management," Gethin says but stresses that it is not just a case of people applying any old honey to wounds and hoping for miracles.
In looking after chronic wounds it has to be medical grade honey such as manuka.
The honey is also used to fight gum disease and tooth decay - despite its incredible sweetness - soothe sore throats, combat acne and aid digestion.
In fact, there are so many conditions which advocates say it can treat that it might well be a wonder drug in honeyed form. It has grown in popularity in Ireland in recent years and the hefty price tag of more than €30 for a small jar of the highest potency honey is not acting as a deterrent.
One advocate of the honey told The Irish Times he had recently used it to treat a sty on his eye with "outstanding" results. The sty had lingered for close to a month before, on the advice of his mother, he started dabbing the honey on to his eyelid. "Within four days it had completely cleared up," he says. "I was amazed by how effective it was."
Melia Farrell of the Nourish health food stores in Dublin says that while it has been popular in Australia and New Zealand for close to a decade, is has only started to grow in popularity in Ireland in the past couple of years.
"A lot of people come in with sore throats and chest infections," she says and continue to use it long after those conditions have cleared up.
"Once people start using it, they grow very fond of it and keep taking it."
Known as apitherapy, the use of honey for medical purposes has been common for thousands of years. It has high levels of hydrogen peroxide and, as recently as the second World War, honey was used as a wound disinfectant.
But with the invention and widespread use of antibiotics, its popularity dwindled.
There is an important distinction to be drawn between active manuka honey which has strong anti-bacterial properties and inactive manuka which is not so effective.
Active manuka's anti-bacterial component has its own classification, the Unique Manuka Factor (UMF) which runs from UMF5 - thought to be equivalent to a 5 per cent solution of a standard antiseptic - to UMF20, or 20 per cent solution of antiseptic.
The presence of UMF can be detected by laboratory testing, conducted by the Honey Research Unit at the University of Waikato in New Zealand.
The Honey Research Unit is headed by biochemist Prof Peter Molan, who is credited with identifying manuka's healing qualities.
It has grown into a big business in the past decade and the buzz around the honey is getting louder. Whether New Zealand's bees will be able to cater for increased demand is open to question.