Green tea is a very common beverage in Egypt, and it is quite likely that patients will drink green tea while taking antibiotics. Medical researchers wanted to find out if green tea would interfere with the antibiotics' action, have no effect, or increase the potency of the medicine.

"We tested green tea in combination with antibiotics against 28 disease causing micro-organisms belonging to two different classes," says Dr. Mervat Kassem from the Faculty of Pharmacy at Alexandria University in Egypt. "In every single case green tea enhanced the bacteria-killing activity of the antibiotics. For example the killing effect of chloramphenicol was 99.99% better when taken with green tea than when taken on its own in some circumstances."

Green tea also made 20% of drug-resistant bacteria susceptible to one of the cephalosporin antibiotics, an antibiotic drug that resistant strains of bacteria have evolved to resist.

The results surprised the researchers, showing that in almost every case and for all types of antibiotics tested, drinking green tea at the same time as taking the medicines seemed to reduce the bacteria's drug resistance, even in superbug strains, and increase the action of the antibiotics. In some cases, even a low concentration of green tea was effective.

"Our results show that we should consider more seriously the natural products we consume in our everyday life," says Dr. Kassem. "In the future, we will be looking at other natural herb products such as marjoram and thyme to see whether they also contain active compounds which can help in the battle against drug resistant bacteria".

This story has been adapted from material provided by Society for General Microbiology.

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