Scientists tap into history to develop cure for antibiotic resistance

Scientists in Sweden are set to launch a mead, based on old recipes, which they say could help in the fight against antibiotic resistance.

A mead is an alcoholic beverage made from a fermented mix of honey and water.

Called the Honey Hunter's Elixir, the scientists who teamed up with a brewery have long studied bees and their honey, and said that mead had a long track record in bringing positive effects on health.

According to Lund University researcher Tobias Olofsson, a mead was regarded as the drink of the gods which was believed to provide immortality and good health, adding that it was drunk by the Vikings.

In previous research published in 2014, Olofsson and Alejandra Vasquez discovered that lactic acid bacteria found in the honey stomach of bees, mixed with honey itself, could cure chronic wounds in horses that had proved resistant to treatment.

They said their research had proven that these bacteria have the power to collaborate and kill off all the human pathogens they have been tested against, including resistant ones.

According to the team, their honey differs from commercial honey as it uses all 13 beneficial honeybee lactic acid bacteria and the wild yeasts from honey that normally ferment mead spontaneously.

This makes it more effective.

Olofsson said they believed mead could have been the most efficient historical equivalent to today's antibiotics and they see Honey Hunter's Elixir as a possible way of preventing infections.

Adding that more research on the mead needed, Vasquez said they will have volunteers drink the mead and measure different parameters to see if the compounds cause a prevention or a cure for infections.

If human trials are successful it could help doctors overturn the growing threat of antibiotic resistant bacteria.