Green tea can help curb superbugs

Washington, Mar 31 : Egyptian scientists from Alexandria University have revealed that drinking green tea in combination with antibiotics may help beat superbugs.

The study has found that drinking green tea may help in bacteria killing activity of antibiotics against resistant superbugs, thus making them three times more effective.

"We tested green tea in combination with antibiotics against 28 disease causing micro-organisms belonging to two different classes," said Dr Mervat Kassem from the Faculty of Pharmacy at Alexandria University in Egypt.

"In every single case green tea enhanced the bacteria-killing activity of the antibiotics. For example the killing effect of chloramphenicol was 99.99 pct better when taken with green tea than when taken on its own in some circumstances," he added.

In some cases, even a low concentration of green tea was effective.

Green tea also made 20pct of drug-resistant bacteria susceptible to one of the cephalosporin antibiotics.

"Our results show that we should consider more seriously the natural products we consume in our everyday life," said Dr Kassem.

"In the future, we will be looking at other natural herb products such as marjoram and thyme to see whether they also contain active compounds which can help in the battle against drug resistant bacteria," he added.

The study was presented at the Society for General Microbiology's 162nd meeting being held this week at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.

ANI