Standards for Quality Honey for Medicinal Uses

P C Molan, Professor of Biological Sciences and Director of the Honey Research Unit University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

Although honey produced for use as a food is commonly used medicinally, there are risks associated with this when it is used on open wounds and in ophthalmology. If honey is to become accepted as a modern medicine then these risks need to be avoided where possible, so standards need to be put in place for the production of honey for medicinal use.

The risks are: infection resulting from microbial content; reaction to pyrogens from microbial content; allergic reaction to bee proteins or pollen in honey; formation of granulomas from non-biodegradable particles in honey; and to toxic substances in honey.

Gamma-irradiation of honey will remove the risk of infection, but may not be fully effective if the microbial content is too high. Nor will it remove the risk to a reaction to bacterial endotoxins, which may be substantial if the microbial content is high.

The bacterial content of honey can be kept low by maintaining high health in the hive and by clean handling of honey. Allergic reaction to bee proteins in honey cannot be avoided, but allergy to honey is commonly due to a reaction to pollen in the honey.

With appropriate machinery, it is possible to filter out pollen from honey, but high temperatures should be avoided in processing as damage to bioactive components may result. High quality filtration will also remove foreign matter from honey.

The avoidance of toxins in honey depends on the beekeeper: floral sources yielding toxic honey should be avoided when honey is destined for medicinal use, as should sources likely to be polluted with pesticides; measures should be taken to ensure that chemicals and antibiotics used in beekeeping cannot get into medicinal honey.

Another important standard that needs to be put in place for the provision honey for medicinal use is for assurance that the honey has sufficient bioactivity to be therapeutically effective. The antibacterial potency of honey can vary as much as 100-fold.

At present there are honey products on sale with quality-assured levels of antibacterial activity, and established assay protocols to measure this. Research is under way to establish assay protocols for other activities such as antioxidant activity, anti-inflammatory activity and stimulatory activity on growth of repair tissues.