The honey: an alternative for antibiotic-resistant infections?: an experimental study

Abstract

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) is the major cause of death per infection cause, affecting around of 10 million people per year with a more than a million death per year. This problem is aggravated by the resistance spread around the world of M. tuberculosis against the current treatment used nowadays, making more difficult to treat the patients who suffered and died from TB. This data is translated as a social problem because TB affects mainly the African and the Asian continent, the poor people and a huge proportion of young adults, with a negative economic impact in the countries and in the own population. Being studied possible alternatives for this problem and existing such evidence of honey and its antibacterial activity, it has been considered as a possible candidate to treat resistant TB cases.

Objective: the aim of this study is to evaluate if there is a synergistic effect of the honey and honey compounds with current drugs used to treat M. tuberculosis resistant strains in petri dishes (in vitro) and in animal models (in vivo).

Design: blinded and randomised experimental study will be made in Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Center of the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) since January 2021 to December 2023.

Methods: the in vitro study will be made in dishes plates by the Ameri-Ziaei double antibiotic synergism test (AZDAST) method. The in vivo study will be made with 310 Balb/c-OlaHsm (ENVIGO) mice strains divided in different experimental groups, will be infected by M. tuberculosis resistant strains and will receive different treatments (antituberculosis drugs, honey and/or honey compounds). At different time of the follow-up, mice will be sacrificed, and the lung infection will be studied