OK, so this is not quite new news - it did come out at the end of January / start of February. Just we've been busy on other things and not posted on this blog since then.
It does however provide another example of why you need to be very careful in what you read in the media, and how lazy and / or poor journalists can be in not reporting important aspects of a story.
In this case, the researchers at Cardiff Metropolitan University made it quite clear that their work related to proper medical grade manuka honey, and plainly stated that it was important that people do use a correct medical grade manuka honey if they are going going to apply it to wounds.
Unfortunately very few media reports included that point, and only generically mentioned manuka honey. Even a doctor who posted on his blog about the research, and has a good history of finding holes and limitations in other published research made this same error in this case.
It is not only very poor but for this situation potentially dangerous too. There is a significant enough problem of substandard honey, and both misleadingly and falsely labelled product widely being sold in the UK and other countries. The poor reporting will lead to people trying to use low quality and inappropriate honey on their wounds in the false expectation it will help. Some jars that haven't undergone sufficient filtration could even contain things that could be harmful to a wound.
It is a pity because this newly published research from Cardiff is very promising in showing how approved medical grade manuka honey has been effective against another bacteria common in wounds, but also works when biofilms are present - something that is common in hard to heal wounds.
Rather than trying to paraphrase too much here, is better just to point you a decent summary of this new research:
Cardiff Metropolitan University research shows promise of medical manuka honey for wounds
Great examples of approved products (eg with a medical devices license) for wounds are the ManukaCare with 100% medical grade honey or the Medihoney Apinate manuka honey dressings.
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