Growing up in poverty in the agrarian regions of the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe, Musa Murandu was accustomed to the fact that when he fell and broke his knees and elbows, salt was rubbed into his wounds and cuts to quickly heal. However, later, when his father had enough money, the family began to buy something, which in such cases caused the boy much less pain than salt is sugar.
Murandu has always noticed that sugar promotes faster wound healing. So he was surprised when, being hired to work in the UK as a medical orderly in 1997, he discovered that there was no medical use of sugar at all. He decided to try to change that.
Now, Murandu's idea is finally being taken seriously. Murandu, Associate Professor of Adult Care at the University of Wolverhampton, conducted an initial pilot study on the use of sugar in wound healing and received an award from Wound Care magazine in March 2018 for his work.
In some parts of the world, this is the main treatment because people cannot afford to buy antibiotics. But this is of interest to specialists in other countries, since in some patients, infections in wounds have stopped responding to antibiotics.
Murandu says that for treatment, you need to put some sugar on the wound and put a bandage on top. The granules absorb any moisture in which bacteria can grow, and without them, wounds heal faster.
Evidence for all of this came from experiments performed by Murandu in the laboratory. Despite this, he faces a difficult battle. Funding for further research will help him meet his ultimate goal of convincing health experts that sugar can be used as an alternative to antibiotics. The point is that a lot of medical research is funded by pharmaceutical companies. And there is very little chance of getting grants from them to research what they cannot patent.
The sugar Muranda used is regular granular sugar that can be added to tea. During his research, he found that there was no difference between using cane or beet sugar. However, Demerara's unrefined cane sugar was not as effective.
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The study showed that bacterial strains continued to multiply at low sugar concentrations, but were completely suppressed at higher concentrations. Murandu began collecting testimonies in Zimbabwe, Botswana and Lesotho (where he first trained as a paramedic).
“One woman in Harare was about to have her leg amputated when my nephew called me,” says Murandu. “She had a terrible wound on her leg for five years, and the doctor decided to amputate the limb. I told her to rinse the wound, apply sugar, leave it for a while, and then repeat the procedure. It helped the woman keep her leg."
This, he said, is one example of why there is so much interest in this method, especially in countries where people cannot afford to use antibiotics.
As Murandu continues her research, US veterinarian Maureen McMicle has been using a similar method for many years to treat animals.
McMill, at the University of Illinois Veterinary School Hospital, first began using sugar and honey to treat wounds in pets back in 2002. She said she was attracted by the combination of simplicity and low cost, especially for treating pet owners who could not afford conventional remedies.
In addition to being cheaper, sugar has another advantage: we are using more and more antibiotics to which bacteria develop resistance.
This ancient method is widely used by many poor people in developing countries, but it was only in Britain that Murandu realized the importance of sugar in medicine. He sees the prospects for combining folk knowledge with modern research.
Sergey Lukavsky