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Review
. 2011 Apr;1(2):154-60.
doi: 10.1016/S2221-1691(11)60016-6.

Honey: its medicinal property and antibacterial activity

Manisha Deb Mandal  1 , Shyamapada Mandal
Affiliations
Review

Honey: its medicinal property and antibacterial activity

Manisha Deb Mandal et al. Asian Pac J Trop Biomed. 2011 Apr.

Abstract

Indeed, medicinal importance of honey has been documented in the world's oldest medical literatures, and since the ancient times, it has been known to possess antimicrobial property as well as wound-healing activity. The healing property of honey is due to the fact that it offers antibacterial activity, maintains a moist wound condition, and its high viscosity helps to provide a protective barrier to prevent infection. Its immunomodulatory property is relevant to wound repair too. The antimicrobial activity in most honeys is due to the enzymatic production of hydrogen peroxide. However, another kind of honey, called non-peroxide honey (viz., manuka honey), displays significant antibacterial effects even when the hydrogen peroxide activity is blocked. Its mechanism may be related to the low pH level of honey and its high sugar content (high osmolarity) that is enough to hinder the growth of microbes. The medical grade honeys have potent in vitro bactericidal activity against antibiotic-resistant bacteria causing several life-threatening infections to humans. But, there is a large variation in the antimicrobial activity of some natural honeys, which is due to spatial and temporal variation in sources of nectar. Thus, identification and characterization of the active principle(s) may provide valuable information on the quality and possible therapeutic potential of honeys (against several health disorders of humans), and hence we discussed the medicinal property of honeys with emphasis on their antibacterial activities.

Keywords: Antibacterial activity; Antimicrobial agents; Antimicrobial property; Glucose oxidase; Honey; Immunomodulatory property; Medical-grade honey; Medicinal property; Non-peroxide effect; Wound healing property.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest statement: We declare that we have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Antibacterial activity of ulmo and manuka honeys based on the ZDI produced for clinical (C) MRSA and standard (S) MRSA, E. coli and P. aeruginosa isolates.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.. MIC of four different honeys (as shown in the figure) to oral bacterial strains (Streptococcus spp., E. coli and S. aureus).
Figure 3.
Figure 3.. MIC of different honey types for bacterial strains causing wound infections.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.. The pH values of different honeys having antibacterial activity
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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