Background Facts: Bee Sting Therapy and MS

Discovery Health

For centuries, honey, bee pollen, and bee venom have been used to treat a number of ailments that vary between chronic pain to skin conditions. Apitherapy, or the medical use of honeybee products that range from royal jelly to bee venom, was used by the ancient Egyptians as a homeopathic remedy for arthritis. Today, bee venom therapy, or bee sting therapy, has captured the attention of medical science as a potential homeopathic remedy for multiple sclerosis (MS) symptoms.

Bee venom therapy (BVT), or apitherapy, uses the stings of live bees to relieve symptoms of MS such as pain, loss of coordination, and muscle weakness. Stinging is not limited to any specific area of the body, as stings in different places seem to produce different results. Apitherapy researchers suggest that certain compounds in bee venom, namely melittin and adolapin, help reduce inflammation and pain, and that the combination of all the "ingredients" in bee venom somehow helps the body to release natural healing compounds in its own defense.

Given the fact that no major studies on BVT have been done so far, it is estimated that only about 50 U.S. physicians use it to treat MS or other diseases. And the evidence that BVT helps MS patients, although encouraging, remains anecdotal. Despite this, of the more than 250,000 cases of multiple sclerosis nationwide, thousands of patients are said to use bee venom as an alternative approach to the interferon, corticosteroids, and other drugs typically used…