"Medical-grade" honey has attractive microbicidal properties.
Surging rates of antibiotic resistance have kindled interest in all possible treatment alternatives, even those from centuries past. Honey has a folk reputation as a microbicide, and a small repository of literature backs its effectiveness (and that of granulated sugar) for treating infected wounds.
Researchers in the Netherlands, with government and industry support, investigated the antimicrobial properties of a "medical-grade" honey, which is produced by bees in closed greenhouses. In in vitro studies of bactericidal activity, a 40% solution of honey reproducibly killed all bacterial isolates tested, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, vancomycin-resistant Escherichia faecium, and multidrug-resistant gram-negative rods. Forty-two healthy volunteers then had small forearm patches of skin swabbed with honey and covered with polyurethane dressings for 2 days. Compared with control skin patches (covered with polyurethane, but without honey) on the same volunteers, the honey-covered patches were culture-negative for bacteria significantly more often.
Comment: These results probably belong to the "don’t try this at home" school of medical investigation, because grocery-grade honey is not standardized and can be bacterially contaminated. Still, honey might one day take its place alongside mupirocin as a topical microbicide or even as a treatment for wounds that are infected with multidrug-resistant organisms.
— Abigail Zuger, MD
Published in Journal Watch General Medicine July 3, 2008
Kwakman PHS et al. Medical-grade honey kills antibiotic-resistant bacteria in vitro and eradicates skin colonization. Clin Infect Dis 2008 Jun 1; 46:1677.