Green Tea to fight MRSA?

Egypt's University of Alexandria recently published some new research into the health benefits of Green Tea at a meeting of the Society for General Microbiology in Edinburgh. 

It demonstrated that "Green Tea made one in five drug-resistant bacteria susceptible to one of the cephalosporin antibiotics (a class of antibiotic that some strains of bacteria have mutated to resist)" such as MRSA.

Which is very good news indeed as the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention have recently announced that 2m people in the United States are affected on an annual basis by anti-biotic resistant infections caused by bacteria, like MRSA.

MRSA is a super bug.  It's clever enough to keep mutatating in order to avoid beig killed by anti-biotics.  

Dr Salah Ahmed of the Egyptian University said "we're now seeing from this study that Green Tea can inhibit the progress of disease.  It has also been shown to prevent or inhibit the growth of some kinds of cancer".

The other good news is that generally, Green Tea has less caffeine, is cheaper and has fewer side effects than coffee.

Dr Zoo Feng Zhang, a cancer epidemiology researcher at UCLA, recommends 2 - 3 cups a day (teacups not mugs) and suggested that 4 -5 cups a day can reduce disease susceptibility even more.  

Edith Maskell of Bromley Health Management said "it's not that I'm a cynic of course, but hopefully the study wasn't sponsored by a manufacturer of Green Tea !"

Source : http://newsweek.com

Monday, 7 April 2008