How a weird medieval remedy made of garlic, onion, wine and bile could actually turn into effective modern medicine
The Dark Ages aren’t exactly thought of as a time for medical advancement. While some treatments verging on medieval torture, like that scene in The Princess Bride (above), if you take away the cow dung and toad vomit lozenges, not everything was snake oil. Medieval treatments that work sound oxymoronic. They come from an age infected with superstition, when people were convinced things like demons and dark magic as causes of illness. However, a team of scientists from the University of Warwick recreated a thousand-year-old salve that shows promise in killing bacteria which could otherwise be lethal. “Bald’s eyesalve” comes from the pages of the medical text Bald’s Leechbook (leeches were a hot commodity in medicine back then). This concoction of garlic, onion, wine and bile might sound random—but it could eventually be used to treat the untreatable. “Understanding the relationship between combinations of natural products and antimicrobial activity may generate a novel way to create new antibiotics from botanicals,” said Jessica Furner-Pardoe and Blessing Anonye, who recently published a study in Scientific Reports. “Bald’s eyesalve [is] an example of an “ancientbiotic” that requires the combination of all ingredients for potent activity against a panel of clinically important bacterial strains.” Bacteria keep getting more and more resistant to antibiotics. They can be free-floating, but are much more effective when they grow together in masses known as biofilms. What team especially wanted to see how effective Bald’s eyesalve was against pathogens such as strep and staph. Along with other gnarly bacteria, they can be found in often antibiotic-resistant biofilms in diabetic foot ulcers, which can mean amputation to prevent avoid blood infection. Even if they are obliterated for a while, they usually make a comeback. Biofilms are getting harder to take down. This is why the team felt it was most important to test the medieval medicine against biofilms as opposed to bacteria that were just meandering around. The salve was tested against both free-floating bacteria and biofilms, and unsurprisingly killed off the floaters much more easily. Biofilms were more of a challenge. For the experiment, both an environment made to mimic the fluid from wounds such as diabetic ulcers, along with a more lifelike wound environment made of cultured tissue, were recreated. What the team found was that no single ingredient in the salve was any more effective than all the ingredients combined. While each of the ingredients is known to have antimicrobial powers, none were more effective alone than all of them were together. Allicin is a sulfuric compound in garlic that is released when plant tissue is destroyed. While garlic was suspected to be one of the stronger ingredients because of this, isolated allicin was nowhere near the bacteria-killing level that it was when combined with everything else. Wine was another ingredient that was immediately thought to be effective because of the alcohol (you know what they say about booze and a sore throat). Even the ethanol in wine was not enough. This could mean a problem with the way medicines are developed now, even a thousand years after someone came up with ye olde remedy. “It could be that the conventional process for developing drugs may miss key aspects of those herbal remedies which could be effective against biofilms,” the scientists said. “Conventional drug development calls for the isolation of single active compounds, whereas historical medicine usually calls for combinations of whole plants (and other natural materials). There is some evidence that whole plant extracts can have stronger biological effects than individual isolated compounds.” So isolating just one compound from a natural source isn’t always the answer. Too much allicin can be toxic. Everyone knows what too much wine is capable of. Synergy of ingredients can mean the difference between life and death, as the results of the experiment showed. It’s kind of like the Avengers in microbial form. Any one of them would have never been able to destroy Thanos alone, but their combined power was enough to blow him away, even if Tony Stark and the Hulk’s hand did take a tremendous hit. It would have been impossible otherwise. Medieval medicine is only going to be investigated further after this, but is cow dung really what you need for a toothache? Get thee to a dentist instead.
Hot New Medicine: This 1,000-Year-Old Mixture of Garlic, Onion, Wine, and Cow Bile
A mixture of garlic, onion, wine, and cow bile showed results at clearing biofilm infection. The search for new antibiotics is even more critical for treating insidious, long-lasting biofilms. Separately, the ingredients didn't work, even if just one was removed. Scientists are studying a millennium-old medicinal recipe they say might be able to kill some antibiotic-resistant bacterial structures: onions, garlic, a splash of wine, and some cow bile. The ingredients sound like a house vinaigrette until you get to, well, the cow bile. Researchers have known the mixture can kill Staphylococcus aureus, the bacterium responsible for most of what we call “Staph infections.” Now, a new paper shows it can also, figuratively, “cut through” stubborn and difficult-to-treat biofilm infections. ⚗️ You love weird science. We love weird science. Let's get weird together. Buckle up for something gross. A biofilm infection is one where the bacteria have grown into a “mucuslike matrix of carbohydrate” (a tough day for the writers at Encyclopedia Britannica) that sticks to the infected wound or area. Biofilm’s opposite term is planktonic, an individual organism—a word formed from the sea creatures that, in turn, is from the Greek for to wander or drift. And a biofilm is greater—grosser, stickier, more dangerous, and more insidious—than the sum of its planktonic parts. A facsimile of a page from Bald’s Leechbook. Public domain That makes it all the more exciting that “Bald’s eyesalve,” named because of its source in the medieval medical text Bald’s Leechbook, has been able to penetrate the film. “Biofilms are much harder to treat due to reduced penetration of antibiotics through the extracellular matrix and the enhanced tolerance of biofilm-grown cells to many in-use antibiotics,” the researchers explain: “Non-healing, infected foot ulcers, which can be a complication of diabetes, provide an especially sobering example. [...] Despite the widely understood problems of treating biofilms, Bald’s eyesalve was also able to significantly reduce viable cell counts in biofilms of S. epidermidis and MRSA and was able to completely eradicate biofilms of S. aureus Newman, A. baumannii and S. pyogenes, in an established soft-tissue wound model.” None of the ingredients works alone, but in mixture, they're effective. Removing the wine, for example, reduced the effectiveness a lot despite wine’s relatively low levels of the antimicrobial agents scientists believe make this mixture effective. And only by exhaustively testing the mixture can scientists begin to design a “clinical deployment” for patients. “It could be that the conventional process for developing drugs may miss key aspects of those herbal remedies which could be effective against biofilms,” the researchers speculate. “Conventional drug development calls for the isolation of single active compounds, whereas historical medicine usually calls for combinations of whole plants (and other natural materials).” 📩 Make your inbox more awesome. The scientists used a total of 75 different mixtures, which they made the traditional way. “The outer skin of the garlic and onion was removed. The garlic and onion were finely chopped, and equal volumes of garlic and onion were crushed together using a mortar and pestle for 2 min. The crushed onion and garlic were then combined with equal volumes of wine and bovine bile salts.” Since there’s a translation disagreement from the original old language of the Leechbook, they made some dual batches using both onion and leek. Here’s the key motivator for this particular experiment: Scientists already knew the salve mixture showed results with killing many kinds of dangerous bacteria, but they didn’t know how those results scaled up to a more ingrained, established biofilm infection situation. And what they found is that the mixture worked on many of the bacteria in biofilm form, but not all. “Our work highlights the need to explore not only single compounds but also mixtures of natural products for treating biofilm infections and underlines the importance of working with biofilm models when exploring natural products for the anti-biofilm pipeline,” the scientists explain. This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io This commenting section is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page. You may be able to find more information on their web site.
Get yer Dodger Dogs and garlic fries at home via delivery
© Provided by Associated Press Los Angeles Dodgers special assistant Jose Vizcaino stands on the field during practice as cutouts occupy some of the stadium seats before the team's baseball game against the San Francisco Giants, Sunday, July 26, 2020, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) LOS ANGELES (AP) — Get yer Dodger Dogs and garlic fries at home? Yes, fans craving their favorite foods served at the ballpark can have them delivered in the Los Angeles area starting Monday. A new service called Home Plates, which is launching exclusively on the Postmates app, will deliver to Hollywood and West Hollywood. There are plans to expand to other areas later. Three types of hot dogs — Dodger Dogs, Brooklyn Dodger Dogs and Doyer Dogs — will be available, along with micheladas, garlic fries and carne asada nachos served in a helmet. Some dishes are being created specially for Home Plates, including a Brooklyn-style pizza and a Dodgers blue gelato. The menu includes burgers, tater tots, salads and chicken tenders, too. The food will be made at the new Home Team Kitchens restaurant in Hollywood. The stadium food will be available year-round, not just during the shortened baseball season. The public isn't allowed at Dodgers games because of the coronavirus pandemic; fans have been replaced by cardboard cutouts in the seats. ___ More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
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