VINEGAR WILL KILL MOST PARASITES and is now used in breads to preserve it from mold i.e.: The active ingredient in vinegar, acetic acid, can
effectively kill mycobacteria, even highly drug-resistant
Mycobacterium tuberculosis, an international team of researchers from
Venezuela, France, and the US reports in mBio®, the online
open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
Acetic acid might be used as an inexpensive and
non-toxic disinfectant against drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB)
bacteria as well as other stubborn, disinfectant-resistant
mycobacteria.
Vinegar
Kills Tuberculosis Mycobacteria (white vinegar is
great cleaner (ACV for internal uses)
Flavored vinegar
This is a quote from www.TheNerdyFarmWife.com about the benefits of medicinal vinegars:
“Medicinal vinegars (Vinegar Extracts) have been around since ancient times, and were an excellent way to preserve and dispense herbs before distilled spirits were known about. While the advantages of using vodka or brandy to make your herbal tinctures are many – including greater potency and longer shelf life, there are those who wish to avoid alcohol for personal reasons or due to the higher cost, making vinegar extracts ideal for them to create.
Vinegar extracts (also known as “aceta”) are weaker than alcohol based tinctures, so the required dose is higher. And, while vinegar won’t draw out as many of the beneficial components of an herb that alcohol will, it does excel at drawing minerals and vitamins from a plant. Add those extra nutrients to the already established benefits of apple cider vinegar and you have a very acceptable option for your herbal remedies toolbox.”
Click here to read the rest of the article at TheNerdyFarmWife.com and learn how to make medicinal vinegars and oxymels.
Credits: Wikipedia
Work with drug-resistant tuberculosis bacteria carries
serious biohazard risks. Chlorine bleach is often used to disinfect
TB cultures and clinical samples, but bleach is toxic and corrosive.
Other effective commercial disinfectants can be too expensive for TB
labs in the resource-poor countries where the majority of TB occurs.
“Mycobacteria are known to cause tuberculosis and
leprosy, but non-TB mycobacteria are common in the environment, even
in tap water, and are resistant to commonly used disinfectants. When
they contaminate the sites of surgery or cosmetic procedures, they
cause serious infections. Innately resistant to most antibiotics,
they require months of therapy and can leave deforming scars.” says
Howard Takiff, senior author on the study and head of the Laboratory
of Molecular Genetics at the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific
Investigation (IVIC) in Caracas.
“Many cosmetic procedures are performed outside of
hospital settings in developing countries, where effective
disinfectants are not available.” Takiff says, “These bacteria
are emerging pathogens. How do you get rid of them?”
While investigating the ability of non-TB mycobacteria
to resist disinfectants and antibiotics, Takiff’s postdoctoral
fellow, Claudia Cortesia stumbled upon vinegar’s ability to kill
mycobacteria. Testing a drug that needed to be dissolved in acetic
acid, Cortesia found that the control, with acetic acid alone, killed
the mycobacteria she wanted to study.
“After Claudia’s initial observation, we tested for
the minimal concentrations and exposure times that would kill
different mycobacteria,” says Takiff. Since the Venezuelan lab does
not work with clinical TB, collaborators Catherine Vilchèze and
William Jacobs, Jr. at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New
York tested TB strains and found that exposure to a 6% solution of
acetic acid for 30 minutes effectively kills tuberculosis, even
strains resistant to almost all antibiotics.
Said another way, exposure to 6% acetic acid, just
slightly more concentrated than supermarket vinegar, for 30 minutes,
reduced the numbers of TB mycobacteria from around 100 million to
undetectable levels.
During a sabbatical in Laurent Kremer’s laboratory at
the University of Montpellier 2 in France, Takiff tested how
effective acetic acid was against M. abscessus, one of the most
resistant and pathogenic of the non-TB mycobacteria.
M. abscessus required exposure to a stronger 10% acetic
acid solution for 30 minutes to be effectively eliminated. The team
also tested the activity under biologically ‘dirty’ conditions
similar to those encountered in clinical situations, by adding
albumin protein and red blood cells to the acetic acid and found it
was still effective.
“There is a real need for less toxic and less
expensive disinfectants that can eliminate TB and non-TB
mycobacteria, especially in resource-poor countries,” says Takiff.
He notes that even a 25% solution of acetic acid is only a minor
irritant and around US$100 can buy enough acetic acid to disinfect up
to 20 liters of TB cultures or clinical samples.
“For now this is simply an interesting observation.
Vinegar has been used for thousands of years as a common disinfectant
and we merely extended studies from the early 20th century on acetic
acid,” concludes Takiff. “Whether it could be useful in the
clinic or mycobacteriology labs for sterilizing medical equipment or
disinfecting cultures or clinical specimens remains to be
determined.”
mBio® is an open access online journal published by
the American Society for Microbiology to make microbiology research
broadly accessible. The focus of the journal is on rapid publication
of cutting-edge research spanning the entire spectrum of microbiology
and related fields.
It can be found online at http://mbio.asm.org.
It can be found online at http://mbio.asm.org.
