Moses Mulandu grew up in a poor village in the highlands of eastern Zimbabwe. If he falls or cuts, he is used to wiping the wound with salt. But sometimes, with luck, his father can spend more money to buy something that is much less irritating to the wound-sugar.
Mulando has always noticed that wounds heal faster with sugar than without sugar. Therefore, when he served as practical nurse in the National Health Service (NHS) from 65438 to 0997, he was surprised that sugar was not used as a formal medical means, so he began to have the idea of promoting change.
Now, Murando's idea has finally been taken seriously. Mulando is now a senior lecturer in the Department of Adult Nursing at Wolverhampton University. He has completed a preliminary experimental study. This research mainly focuses on the application of sugar in wound healing, and won the award of March 20 18 in Journal of Wound Care.
In some parts of the world, this kind of treatment will be very important because many people there can't afford antibiotics. In Britain, the application of sugar in wound healing has also attracted attention. Because once the wound is infected, antibiotics sometimes don't work.
The emergence of bacterial resistance to antibiotics worries the medical community, so it is seeking other feasible treatment schemes, such as sugar. /Getty Images
The hidden power of sugar
Mulando said that treating a wound with sugar is to sprinkle sugar on the wound and put a bandage on it. Sugar particles will absorb water from wounds, and bacteria need water to reproduce. Without bacteria, wounds can heal faster.
Mulando's research in the laboratory provided the foundation for this, and more and more case studies from all over the world also supported his findings, including many successful cases of using sugar to cure antibiotic-resistant wounds.
Even so, Mulando still faces an arduous challenge-obtaining financial support for the follow-up research to achieve the ultimate goal: persuading the British National Health Service to use sugar as a substitute for antibiotics. However, most medical research is sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. Murando believes that these companies usually do not sponsor research that cannot be patented because it is unprofitable.
The sugar used in Mulando's research is the most common granular sugar, and people drink tea every day to flavor it. He also found that the use of sucrose or beet sugar in in vitro experiments was basically similar, while the use of gold sugar (a kind of brown sugar) was not significant.
The experimental results show that the strain can reproduce in the environment of low purity sugar, but high purity sugar will inhibit the growth of the strain. Mulando recorded many clinical cases in Zimbabwe, Botswana and Lesotho, where he first received nursing training. In one case, the patient was a woman living in Harare, Zimbabwe.
He said: "When my nephew called me, this female patient had already made a residual limb measurement and was ready to amputate. Her injury was serious and bothered her for five years. The doctor suggested amputation. I instructed her to clean the wound first, then put sugar on it, let it sit for a while, and then repeat it. "
"The patient's leg was finally saved." He said. This case also reflects why "sugar therapy" has attracted much attention in many places, especially in some countries and regions where ordinary people can't afford antibiotics.
Mulando conducted a 4 1 clinical case study in the UK. At present, he has not released the test results, but he has shared them at some British or international conferences. In the research, one question he can't avoid is: Is this "sugar therapy" also suitable for diabetic patients? Diabetic patients often have leg or foot ulcers, but they need to control their blood sugar levels. On the surface, this method is not suitable for diabetic patients.
However, Murando found that diabetics can also use "sugar therapy" and their blood sugar levels will not rise. He said, "The sugar used in the treatment is sucrose (a disaccharide), which is converted into glucose (monosaccharide) under the catalysis of enzymes." Sucrase exists only in human body, and sugar will be converted after being absorbed by human body. Applying sugar to the wound will not produce the same change.
Sugar therapy is not only effective for human wounds, but also can be used to treat pet wounds. /Getty Images
Macmichael, an American veterinarian on the other side of the Atlantic, has been treating animals in this way for many years while Mulando continued to conduct clinical trials on human patients in Britain.
Macmichael, who works in the Affiliated Hospital of College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Illinois, first applied sugar and honey to animal wounds in 2002. She said that this treatment is simple and cheap. It is very attractive to pet owners who can't afford the medical expenses of conventional treatment methods and sedatives.
Macmichael said that they have been using sugar and honey in surgery, often to treat pets such as cats and dogs, and occasionally to treat farm animals. Honey has a healing effect similar to sugar. A study shows that honey can inhibit the proliferation of wound bacteria more than sugar, but honey is more expensive.
Macmichael said, "There are many successful cases of this therapy!" One of the clinical cases is a cured stray dog. This is a bait dog that trains pit bulls. Its body is hung for a trained pit bull to attack. When it was delivered, there were as many as forty bites on each leg, but it recovered after eight weeks.
Macmichael said, "Because it is a stray dog, there is no owner to pay for treatment. We use honey and sugar to help it dress the wound. Its resilience is amazing and it has now healed. "
Advantages of "sugar therapy"
In addition to its low price, "sugar therapy" has another advantage different from antibiotic therapy: unlike antibiotics, it will not lead to stronger drug resistance with the increase of treatment times.
Sheila McNeil is an expert in human tissue engineering at the University of Sheffield in the UK. One of her research directions is how sugar naturally produced by human body can promote blood vessel regeneration. This research comes from her research on tumors. She found that a special sugar (2- deoxy -d- ribose) extracted from DNA decomposition would be regenerated continuously. According to McNeil, the team experimenters put this monosaccharide into the chicken embryo membrane, which promoted the regeneration of vascular cells, and the number of cells doubled compared with the control group without sugar.
Of course, these sugars naturally produced in our bodies are completely different from the types of sugars used daily in Mulando's research. McNeil said that the "ideal result" is of course to find a sugar that can heal wounds and promote cell regeneration. She thinks this is the goal of the next research.
Maybe sugar can be widely used as a wound healing agent in the future. / Getty Images
Mulando, currently at Wolverhampton University, plans to use this "sugar therapy" to open a private clinic. He hopes that in the future, sugar will be widely used as a wound healing agent not only in the institutions of the British National Health Service, but also in public hospitals in other countries where he has worked. Nowadays, he often receives emails from all over the world asking for medical advice. He will also instruct patients remotely by email or SMS. Patients thousands of miles away will send photos of their recovery after recovery, thanking him.
Healing wounds with sugar is an ancient therapy and a usage that many developing countries have become accustomed to. But for Mulando, he didn't realize the significance of sugar in the medical field until he came to England. He believes that this is a combination of the "local wisdom" of his hometown Zimbabwe and the modern research facilities in Britain.
He said: "Like sugar, this knowledge comes from Zimbabwe, but it is' purified' in Britain and then goes back to Africa to help people there."
* * This article comes from BBC Chinese version: The hidden power of sugar: replacing antibiotics to heal wounds Author: Clara? Wilkins, the article has been changed.