Honey as a complementary medicine

The beneficial effects of honey on human health have long been recognized. Today, many of those positive effects have been studied to elucidate its mode of action. This review briefly summarizes the best studied features of honey, highlighting it as an appealing alternative medicine. In these reports, the health benefits of honey range from antioxidant, immunomodulatory, and anti-inflammatory activity to anticancer action, metabolic and cardiovascular benefits, prebiotic properties, human pathogen control, and antiviral activity. These studies also support that the honey's biological activity is mainly dependent on its floral or geographic origin. In addition, some promising synergies between honey and antibiotics have been found, as well as some antiviral properties that require further investigation. Altogether, these studies show that honey is effectively a nutraceutical foodstuff.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Honey health benefits and uses in medicine

The generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and other free radicals during metabolism is an essential and normal process that ideally is compensated through the antioxidant system. However, due to many environmental, lifestyle, and pathological situations, free radicals and oxidants can be produced in excess, resulting in oxidative damage of biomolecules (e.g., lipids, proteins, and DNA). This plays a major role in the development of chronic and degenerative illness such as cancer, autoimmune disorders, aging, cataract, rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative diseases (Pham-Huy et al. 2008; Willcox et al. 2004). The human body has several mechanisms to counteract oxidative stress by producing antioxidants, which are either naturally synthetized in situ, or externally supplied through foods, and/or supplements (Pham-Huy et al. 2008).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects of Tualang honey in alkali injury on the eyes of rabbits: Experimental animal study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Alkali injury is one of the most devastating injuries to the eye. It results in permanent unilateral or bilateral visual impairment. Chemical eye injury is accompanied by an increase in the oxidative stress. Anti-inflammatory and antioxidant agents play a major role in the treatment of chemical eye injuries. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the anti-inflammatory (clinical and histopathological) and antioxidant effects of Tualang honey versus conventional treatment in alkali injury on the eyes of rabbits.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A preliminary study was carried out prior to the actual study to establish the alkali chemical injury on rabbit's cornea and we found that alkali chemical injury with 2 N NaOH showed severe clinical inflammatory features. In actual study, alkali injury with 2 N NaOH was induced in the right eye of 10 New Zealand White rabbits' cornea. The rabbits were divided into two groups, Group A was given conventional treatment and Group B was treated with both topical and oral Tualang honey. Clinical inflammatory features of the right eye were recorded at 12 hours, 24 hours, 72 hours, 5^thday and 7^thday post induction of alkali burn on the cornea. The histopathological inflammatory features of the right corneas of all rabbits were also evaluated on day-7. The level of total antioxidant status and lipid peroxidation products in the aqueous humour, vitreous humour and serum at day-7 were estimated biochemically. Fisher's Exact, Chi-Square and Mann-Whitney test were used to analyse the data.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There was no statistically significant difference in clinical inflammatory features (p > 0.05) between honey treated and the conventional treated group at different times of examination. Histopathological examination of the cornea showed the number of polymorphonuclear leucocytes was below 50 for both groups (mild grade). There was also no significant difference in the level of total antioxidant status as well as lipid peroxidation products in aqueous humour (p = 0.117, p = 0.382 respectively), vitreous humour (p = 0.917, p = 0.248 respectively) and serum (p = 0.917, p = 0.332 respectively) between honey treated and the conventional treated group.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Tualang honey has almost the equal effects when compared with the conventional treatment in treating alkali injury on rabbit's eye. Future research with more number of rabbits and control group is warranted to explore the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects of Tualang honey.</p