Honey dressing won't speed wound healing

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Wound dressings impregnated with honey won't help heal difficult-to-treat leg ulcers, a clinical trial from New Zealand shows.

In fact, Dr. Andrew Jull of the University of Auckland and colleagues found, honey dressings caused more pain and adverse events than standard wound coverings, and were also more expensive.

Honey has been used to treat wounds for millennia, and interest in its therapeutic potential for healing "is undergoing a revival," Jull and his team note. While there is evidence from lab and animal studies that honey can kill bacteria and improve healing, they add, human studies haven't been of sufficient quality to guide decisions on whether honey should be used to treat acute or chronic wounds.

Venous leg ulcers are sores in the lower leg that persist for several weeks and are typically treated with compression bandages. To examine the potential role of honey in helping to heal such chronic wounds, Jull and his team randomized 386 men and women with venous leg ulcers to receive standard wound dressings or dressings impregnated with honey.

After 12 weeks, the researchers found, 55.6 percent of the honey-treated wounds had healed, compared to 49.7 percent of the wounds in the control group, which wasn't a statistically significant difference. Wounds healed in an average of 63.5 days for the honey group compared to 65.5 days for the control group, again, not a significant difference.

However, patients in the honey group were 30 percent more likely to have adverse events, and they were also more likely to report pain. There was no difference in health related quality of life between the two groups.

Honey treatment is known to be painful for some patients, the researchers note, probably due to its acidity.

Based on the findings, they conclude, treatment of venous ulcers should continue to consist of compression and other accompanying therapies with proven effectiveness.

SOURCE: British Journal of Surgery, January 2008.