Health Farm

The problem of antibiotic (microbial) resistance is so dire that people are predicting the era of antibiotics may soon end, ushering in a ‘post-antibiotic’ apocalyptic age of drug-resistant super-bugs likely to kill anyone unlucky enough to pick up a common infection.

But Canadian researchers may have found an unlikely medicinal saviour in cranberries, which studies have shown to possess molecules that help stave off antibiotic resistance.

Making bacteria more sensitive to antibiotics

Intrigued by the widespread belief that cranberry juice helps treat urinary tract infections (UTIs), researchers from McGill University in Quebec explored the potential of cranberries to fight off infections. Tests identified a cranberry extract that made bacteria more sensitive to antibiotics.

Under normal lab conditions, bacteria treated with an antibiotic eventually became resistant. But when researchers simultaneously treated bacteria with both an antibiotic and the cranberry extract, evidence of resistance couldn’t be found.

Researchers credited molecules called proanthocyanidins for the breakthrough, explaining that the molecules made bacteria membranes more permeable to antibiotics. Proanthocyanidins also disrupted the mechanism bacteria use to eliminate the antibiotic.

What’s bad for bacteria is good news for mankind.