Researchers found that coriander oil could be used to treat a host of infections counting food poisoning and superbug MRSA. The extract of coriander herb is resistant to a range of toxic bacteria which cause infections that are resistant to drugs, showed a recent study.
Coriander is used extensively in Mediterranean and Asian cuisine. It has been recognized as a medicinal plant since ancient times. However, the mechanism by which it works was not understood previously. A team of researchers from the University of Beira Interior, Portugal tested samples of oil, extracted from a coriander plant, against twelve deadly bacteria.
All revealed diminished growth and most were eradicated by a solution containing less than one and half percent of the oil. The Portuguese researchers found that the oil attacks and kills the outer membrane of bacteria cells, counting salmonella, E. coli and MRSA. The study was reported in the Journal of Medical Microbiology.
Dr Fernanda Domingues, co-author of the study explained the working of the oil. He says it disrupts the barrier between the membrane of bacterial cell and its environment and inhibits essential processes including respiration, which ultimately leads to the death of the bacterial cell. Coriander oil could help the millions who suffer from food-borne infirmities every year.
It could become an innate substitute to common antibiotics. They predict, the use of coriander in lotions, mouth rinses and even pills, to fight multidrug-resistant bacterial infections that otherwise could not be treated and will improve people’s quality of life, stated Dr Domingues. However, the authors say more study is required into how it would be developed into a drug.
There are about one million people suffer a food poising in the UK, around twenty thousand needing hospital care and five hundred death, revealed the statistics of the Food Standards Agency. There were more than nineteen hundred cases of MRSA in UK in 2009-2010.