Green Tea Battles Superbugs to a Standstill

The pharmacy researchers have shown that drinking green tea helps the action of antibiotics in their fight against resistant superbugs, making them up to three times more effective.

Green tea is a common beverage in Egypt, and patients are likely to drink green tea while taking antibiotics. The medical researchers wanted to find out if green tea would interfere with the action of the antibiotics, have no effect, or increase the medicines’ effects.

"We tested green tea in combination with antibiotics against 28 disease causing micro-organisms belonging to two different classes," says Dr. Mervat Kassem from the Faculty of Pharmacy at Alexandria University in Egypt.

"In every single case green tea enhanced the bacteria-killing activity of the antibiotics. For example the killing effect of chloramphenicol was 99.99 percent better when taken with green tea than when taken on its own in some circumstances."

A cup of powdered green tea called matcha. (Photo credit unknown)

Green tea also made 20 percent of drug-resistant bacteria susceptible to one of the cephalosporin antibiotics. These are important antibiotics that new drug resistant strains of bacteria have evolved to resist.

The results surprised the researchers, showing that in almost every case and for all types of antibiotics tested, drinking green tea at the same time as taking the medicines seemed to reduce the bacteria’s drug resistance, even in superbug strains, and increase the action of the antibiotics. In some cases, even a low concentration of green tea was effective.

"Our results show that we should consider more seriously the natural products we consume in our everyday life," says Dr. Kassem. "In the future, we will be looking at other natural herb products such as marjoram and thyme to see whether they also contain active compounds which can help in the battle against drug resistant bacteria."

Green tea already is credited with many health benefits.

In previous studies, a substance in green tea called EGCG was found to be effective against severe sepsis, an abnormal immune system response to a bacterial infection that kills 225,000 Americans every year. In November 2007, Dr. Haichao Wang of The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research showed that survival in mice with sepsis jumped 25 percent when they were given green tea.

In December, the American Association for Cancer Research said green tea extract, a powerful antioxidant, shows efficacy against colorectal cancer.

Also in December a new study published in the journal "Biological Psychiatry" indicates green tea may protect brain cells from Parkinson’s disease, a progressive, degenerative disorder of the central nervous system for which there is no cure.

Green tea has long been of interest to researchers given studies that have shown populations in which it is often consumed, such as the Chinese and Japanese, generally have lower rates of cancer.

French scientists have found that very high doses of antioxidant polyphenols shut down and prevent cancerous tumors by cutting off the formation of new blood vessels needed for tumor growth. Polyphenols are commonly found in red wine, fruits, vegetables, and green tea.

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