Monday, September 16, 2013

Heather Honey Best for Treating Horse Wounds

The Horse, 9/10/2013
Scottish researchers have some sweet news in the field of equine wound healing: Honey’s all the buzz in natural wound remedies, and according to recent research, it works with horses, too. Better yet, it’s not just the tried-and-true manuka honey that works, but a wide variety of honeys from different parts of the world…
Pollock and colleagues investigated the effects of 28 different honeys—the majority of which were purchased at a local supermarket—on infectious agents recovered from equine wounds. They first tested the honeys for the presence of infectious agents of their own. They then tested those considered “uncontaminated” in a laboratory on 10 different bacteria isolates from equine wounds.
As it turned out, most of the honeys—18 of them—were already contaminated with infectious agents, including Bacillus spp, Proteus spp, an unidentified Enterobacteriaceae organism, and an unidentified fungus, Pollock said. The other honeys—local varieties primarily from Scotland and North Africa, as well as some “medicinal” manuka honeys packaged as veterinary ointments—were all found to be effective in killing all 10 of the tested bacteria, he said. That list of bacteria even included stubborn pathogens such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus…
Interestingly, the “medicinal” honeys weren't necessarily the most effective, Pollock added. In fact, the best performance came from Scottish heather honey, which inhibited the growth of all 10 bacterial isolates at very low concentrations (ranging from only 2-6%)…

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