A joint German-British research team found that turmeric has a solution to the problem of bacterial resistance to antibiotics, and they announced it in the latest issue of the journal ACS Applied Bio Materials.
The problem is one of the biggest threats to health, according to the World Health Organization, which experts predict will lead to more deaths from cancer by 2050 unless scientists find a way to solve it.
In their quest to find a solution, researchers from the universities of Leeds in the United Kingdom and Monster and Erlangen in Germany found that the use of small capsules filled with natural ingredients, especially curcumin, an active ingredient in turmeric, has anti-inflammatory and anti-tumor qualities, which can help antibiotics To do its job more effectively in the face of the bacteria "Helicobacter pylori", known as "gastric germ".
The World Health Organization estimates that about 4.4 billion people around the world are hosting the pathogen, which was listed in 2017 as a high-priority pathogen in its list of “drug-resistant bacteria”, the biggest threat to global health.
These bacteria hide under the mucous layer of the stomach, which antibiotics cannot effectively penetrate, and do not show symptoms, although they can lead to ulcers and inflammation of the stomach lining and increase the risk of stomach cancer.
"Curcumin-loaded capsules can prevent bacteria from sticking to stomach cells, which in turn helps antibiotics to function," Dr. Francisco Guiculia of the School of Food Sciences in Leeds, UK, said in a report published yesterday by Medical News Today. .
These capsules, together with curcumin, contain the enzyme lysozyme, an enzyme that accelerates the cell wall destruction of certain germs.
"We conducted our experiments on this treatment in the laboratory, we used stomach cells and bacteria outside the human body to prove its effectiveness, and we applied for a patent for this treatment," Goiculia said.