Light therapy may be the answer.

Current research in the area of photomedicine is poised to have a huge impact on how doctors respond to serious drug-resistant staph infections like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. While antibiotics don’t always have the desired results, light therapy for MRSA-infected wounds is showing great promise, according to researchers at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Therapeutic light is not new in the treatment of human ailments. Light therapy devices are successful at providing joint and muscle pain relief, and photodynamic therapies for cancer and dermatological conditions are currently under evaluation.

The light therapy wound treatments being studied at the Wellman Center could help reduce the high mortality rate of MRSA by providing faster cures without side effects. Estimates by the Centers for Disease Control indicate that MRSA kills more people than AIDS in the United States each year.

In animal tests performed by Wellman Center researchers, a deeply penetrating light focused on a wound colonized with MRSA was able to kill the bacteria in just 15 minutes. Treatment with antibiotic medicines takes days to weeks.

Light therapy for MRSA is also good news for patients concerned about the many side effects associated with traditional antibiotics. When focused on an infected wound, the light initiates chemical processes that are harmful to the bacteria, not the patient.

Wellman Center researchers will study the use of light therapy to treat MRSA infections in human populations next.

Doctors at the University of California have obtained funding from the National Institutes of Health, and will soon begin clinical studies of sulfa drugs, used since the 1930s, and clindamycin, in use since the 1970s. These drugs are already used by many physicians to treat MRSA, but they are not currently FDA approved for that use. Clinical trials with 1,200 emergency room patients will begin next year, and could help win a thumbs up from the FDA.

While these antimicrobial drugs could provide a much needed temporary boost in the battle against MRSA, they only offer a short term solution. MRSA bacteria mutate at an alarming rate and will likely develop a resistance to the drugs under investigation. Other researchers are working to provide a more permanent solution in the form of MRSA vaccines.

Research on the antimicrobial properties of the French clay called Agricur will be presented at the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting on Monday, October 29, 2007. David Metge and his co-researchers found that “bacterial cultures lost 90-99% of viability within 24 hours of exposure to the French Agricur clays.” The clay killed the microorganisms penicillin-resistant S. aureus (PRSA) and pathogenic Escherichia coli (E. coli), in addition to MRSA and M. ulcerans.

The research on Agricur was funded in part by a grant from the National Institutes of Health. Additional studies are needed to determine how the clay works to destroy bacteria.

Dressings made from honey are particularly effective at treating MRSA, and are already widely used for wound care in New Zealand where they harvest manuka, a bitter, medicinal tasting honey with exceptional antimicrobial properties. Manuka honey is catching on worldwide, and manuka dressings manufactured by Derma Sciences even became FDA approved for wound care in the United States in mid-2007. Honey dressings produce good results on a wide spectrum of wound types.

Although the antibacterial effect of bee honey is increasingly accepted by the medical research community, the way in which it works is still poorly understood. It is known that bees secrete an enzyme that causes a chemical reaction that produces hydrogen peroxide. In addition to the role that enzyme may play, researchers are looking into the composition of honey, with its low water/high sugar makeup, to explain its ability to inhibit MRSA and other staph infections.

Although some American doctors remain skeptical, promising studies in Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand are paving the way for further research. To date, more than 2000 people have participated clinical trials studying the efficacy of honey in wound treatment. Considering the overwhelmingly positive results of these studies, biochemist Peter Molan, a University of Waikato expert on the treatment of wounds with honey, laments that honey therapy hasn’t been universally accepted as a dressing for wounds.

With the recent media focus on antibiotic-resistant strains of staph and other superbugs, alternative therapies that supplement or replace ineffective antibiotics are receiving a lot of attention. Honey, both cheaper and potentially safer than silver and iodine, is poised to emerge as a leading staph infection treatment.