Tea Tree Oil and Its Efficacy in the Treatment of MRSA Infections
Tea tree oil is the essential oil is obtained from the leaves of tea tree Melaleuca alternifolia. It is used as a general microbial agent, and displays potent and wide-ranging therapeutic properties. The medical benefits cover antiseptic antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral action. Further, it has anti-inflammatory properties, and also can be used as a general immuno-stimulant (through body massage). Today it is being commonly recognized as an effective and versatile natural healing substance, so much so that some people consider it a miracle oil. Nowadays it is often used as an important ingredient in soaps, toothpastes, anti-dandruff shampoos, aftershaves, deodorants, disinfectants, mouth wash liquids, germicides and first-aid medicines.
History
Tea Tree is a native plant of Australia, originally belonging to northeast coastal region of New South Wales, Australia. Even at present Melaleuca alternifolia is only cultivated in Australia and California, though other variants of the tea tree are grown in a few other parts of the world.
The Bundjalung aborigines of Australia have for centuries made use of the tea tree oil for therapeutic purposes. It was used to treat colds and coughs, heal wounds and skin ailments, sores, cuts and burns. The leaves were crushed and inhaled or soaked to make an infusion, leaf washes and mudpacks were applied on areas of skin where treatment was required.
The world did not know about tea tree or even Australia until Captain James Cook discovered the continent in the 18th century. The captain and his companions, however, did not realize the medicinal properties of the tea tree leaves, they were merely used as a substitute for tea leaves, and hence the name mixed with spruce leaves they were also used to prepare a substitute for beer. The therapeutic nature of the oil extracted from tea tree leaves was revealed to the world by the explorer and researcher Arthur Penfield during 1920s and 30s. In 1930, a Sydney surgeon used the tea tree oil to clean a wound, and published the first paper in a medical journal regarding the potential benefits of this substance. A considerable amount of research ensued.
Tea tree oil began to be commercially produced in plantations and was used in the Second World War as a disinfectant, mainly in the Australian army. In the post-war years came the antibiotics and sulfa drugs revolution, and tea tree oil did not stand much of a chance against them. Then in the 70s and 80s interest in natural healing products was revived and tea tree oil began to draw attention. The commercial production was ramped up.
Of late, tea tree oil has become a popular medical substance, mainly because of its incorporation into a few household products such as soaps and shampoos, and its supposedly miraculous efficacy in fighting MRSA.
Chemistry
Tea tree oil contains nearly 100 compounds called terpines or monterpinoids, with the main constituent being terpinen-4-ol which imparts the tea tree oil many of its antibacterial and antifungal properties. Another ingredient, cineole, has antifungal properties. Synergistic action from many of the other terpenes is possible. About 50 of the monoterpinoids are oxygenated, and the remaining are hydrocarbons.
The exact proportions of terpinen-4-ol, cineole and other active components in tea tree oil can vary depending upon the source of production, the ranges normally being 30-48 terpinen-4-ol, 10 28 -terpinene, 5 13 -terpinene, 0 15 1,8-cineole, 1.5 5 -terpinolene, 1.5 8 -terpineol, 1 6 -pinene and 0.5 8 p-cymene. The above ingredients generally comprise up to 90 of the oil.
Conditions indicated for
A host of microorganisms are susceptible to tea tree oil
gram positive bacteria (Staphyloccus aureus, Staphyloccus epidermidis, Staphyloccus pneumoniae, Staphyloccus faecalis, Staphyloccus pyrogenes, Staphyloccus agalactiae, Propioni-bacterium acnes, Betahaemolytic streptococcus),
gram negative bacteria (Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniac, Citrobactor ssp, Shigella sonnei, Proteus mirabilis, Legionella ssp, Pseudomonas aeruginosa)
and fungi (Trichophyton mentagrophytes, Trichophyton rubrum, Aspergillus niger,, Aspergillus flavus, Candida albicans, Microsporum canis, Microsporum gypseum, Thermoactinomycetes vulgaris.)
As such, tea tree oil can be useful in dealing with an impressive range of medical problems, but is most commonly used in dermatological conditions such as acne, candidiasis, herpes, and wounds associated with MRSA. The skin conditions responsive to tea tree oil also include abscesses, warts, athletes foot (tinea pedis), eczema, psoriasis, jock itch, blisters, burns, cold sores, mouth ulcers, gingivitis, lice, dandruff, insect bites, rashes (nappy rash), spots, verrucae, and general wounds. It is also used in cosmetics for general skin care.
Tea tree oil can work in many illnesses of the respiratory system asthma, bronchitis, catarrh, coughs, sinusitis, tuberculosis, and whooping cough and the genito-urinary system thrush, vaginitis, cystitis, pruitis.
In the capacity of an anti-viral, tea tree oil can combat some common infectious diseases such as measles, chicken pox, flu, cold and shingles.
Tea tree oil can be used in boosting immune system and thereby preventing many types of infections. The possible application of this oil in conditions associated with AIDS is also being investigated.
Safety factors
Tea tree oil should not be ingested orally. It can be toxic when consumed internally, but the toxicity depends upon the level of concentration. Although some people advocate internal usage, most doctors recommend using it only topically. Tea tree oil is effective even in very tiny doses.
Tea tree oil can cause allergic reactions. People with sensitive skin should introduce the oil with caution. At first, only a small amount has to be applied on normal skin surface to test for sensitivity.
Tea tree oil may cause hearing loss when used in ears except in very diluted forms.
Maleleuca (Australian) tea tree oil can be confused with Manuka (New Zealand) tea tree oil, both of which are wholly different from one another. One has to take care that the tea tree oil being used is Maleleuca alternifolia. Tea tree oil should not also be confused with Chinese tea oil, cajeput oil, kanuka oil, ti tree oil, and niauouli oil.
Tea tree oil is not a home remedy it is always advisable to consult a physician before using it in moderate to serious cases of infection.
While 100 pure tea tree oil can be used on non-sensitive skin, it is generally advisable to use it in diluted forms, especially in the case of children or pregnant women. Over-the-counter formulations of tea tree oil, such as those used for acne, normally come in 5 concentrations.
In the context of MRSA, care has to be exercised to ensure that the levels of concentration do not fall below 4. Because over-diluted solutions can help create bacterial resistance instead of killing the germs, which is a major concern.
MRSA
In the 1950s, antibiotics heralded a medical revolution that promised to completely subdue infectious diseases. However, just within a decade it was realized that the bacteria started developing resistance against the new drugs. Today, many of the well-known antibiotics of yesteryear are being rendered ineffective. Common infections that could be cured with ease some decades ago are posing a major threat at present. Diseases that were thought to be nearly eradicated in the Western hemisphere, such as tuberculosis, are on an alarming rise.
Staphylococcus aureus is a common bacterium that usually colonizes the epithelial surfaces of humans. S. aureus resides on human skin and inside the nose, causing no infection. However, it can lead to simple problems like pimples and can occasionally even cause serious infections like pneumonia. MRSA is the drug-resistant strain of this bacterium. It can be referred to as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or multi-drug resistant Staphylococcus aureus, and is commonly called simply as staph. MRSA has proved resistant to a broad class of antibiotics known as beta-lactam antibiotics, which includes penicillin derivatives penams, such as methicillin, oxacillin, cloxacillin, nafcillin cephalosporins, monobactams, and carbapenems. There are still a few antibiotics, however, that can act upon MRSA, most prominent among them being vancomycin. However these antibiotics are very expensive and have limited efficacy in that they can only temporarily cure the infection.
Normally, people may harbor MRSA on their bodies without this leading to any complications such people are said to be colonized by the bacteria. But MRSA can become infectious when there occurs a wound or a lesion on the skin. In a post-operative situation, this can become a particularly serious issue, through complicating the healing of surgical sites. MRSA often does cause enormous nuisance for hospitalized patients, causing much pain and trauma. Since, until recently at least, MRSA infections have been mainly prevalent only in hospital settings, it is known as a nosocomial or a hospital-associated infection (HA-MRSA). Hospitalized patients with open wounds or depressed immune systems are very vulnerable to contracting virulent MRSA infections. In the recent times, however, MRSA infections are increasingly occurring outside of healthcare settings, they are known as community-acquired MRSA (CA-MRSA) infections, and are a cause of grave concern. CA-MRSA can be more virulent than HA-MRSA but is susceptible to treatment by common medications such as tetracyclines and sulfa drugs.
After the onset of infection, MRSA progresses rapidly within first 24 to 48 hours and just after 72 hours can take a firm hold in the body becoming resistant to simple treatments. Initial symptoms of the infection are eruptions of small red bumps on the body frequently accompanied by more widespread skin rashes and a fever. As the infection flares up, by the end of 3rd or 4th day, the bumps turn into much larger and more painful bloated pus-filled boils. MRSA can lead to sepsis, toxic shock syndrome, and necrotizing pneumonia. In some cases, the patient may die.
Rationale for using tea tree oil for MRSA
Antibiotic treatment for MRSA is very expensive. But aside from the cost factor, patients are increasingly reporting frustration and dissatisfaction with it. Although the antibiotics may relieve the patient of the excruciating symptoms of the infection by killing the bacteria, upon stopping the treatment the bacteria can re-colonize and re-infect the patient. For the antibiotics to really work, very soon after the disappearance of the symptoms the patient should recover the strength of his immune system, get the wounds healed and regain normalcy in other ways so that though the colonization would happen MRSA would not be in a position to infect the patient. But this can be expected to happen only with a certain fraction of the patients. For others antibiotic treatment can make way for repeated outbreaks and more rounds of antibiotics and even surgeries, creating untold misery. Besides, increasingly patients are reporting that the drugs are simply not working against MRSA, even in relieving the symptoms even after weeks and weeks of treatment. Considering that generally both standard drugs and tea tree oil are not effective in all the cases they are used, the apparently decreasing rate of efficacy of antibiotics is nonetheless disappointing.
It is in this context that the use of tea tree oil for MRSA becomes increasingly relevant. Tea tree oil costs barely a minuscule fraction of that of the standard antibiotic treatment. Tea tree oil not can only heals the MRSA wounds, but usually it can heal them remarkably quickly, just in a matter of a few days.
As Carson et al. (2006) conclude in their review of medical properties of tea tree oil
A paradigm shift in the treatment of infectious diseases is necessary to prevent antibiotics becoming obsolete, and where appropriate, alternatives to antibiotics ought to be considered. There are already several nonantibiotic approaches to the treatment and prevention of infection, including probiotics, phages, and phytomedicines. Alternative therapies are viewed favorably by many patients because they are often not being helped by conventional therapy and they believe there are fewer detrimental side effects. In addition, many report significant improvement while taking complementary and alternative medicines.
We my indeed be approaching a post-antibiotic era.
Mode of application
MRSA infection manifests as boils and wounds over the body. They can be treated by simply dabbing 5 tea tree oil over them. Alternatively, skin can washed in tea tree oil, or the area of the wound can be briefly submerged in water mixed with a few drops of the oil, or a few drops of the oil can be dropped on the boil and covered with a Band-aid. For nasal usage, tea tree oil can be applied in the form of ointment. The exposure of wounds to tea tree oil needs to be carried out 2-3 times a day until the results show.
Expected Results and Clinical Evidence
The patient can expect to be completely healed.
In the recent years there have been several in vitro and in vivo studies that support the claims of many tea tree oil users who have become its fans. The first notable study was by Carson et al. in 1995. They sought to determine the susceptibility of MRSA to tea tree oil by disc diffusion and broth dilution methods. All the 60 MRSA isolates tested against tea tree oil showed positive results.
A 1999 - 2000 study by Caelli et al. found that a 4 tea tree oil nasal ointment and 5 tea tea oil body combination worked better than the combination of 2 muciprocin nasal ointment and triclosan body wash for eradication of MRSA carriage. However, as this experiment was only carried out only on a small number of patients (30), the results are not statistically significant.
A significant study in a clinical setting was conducted in 2004 by Dryden et al. They subjected 114 MRSA patients to a standard drug regimen which included the use of muciprocin nasal ointment, chlorhexidine gluconate soap and silver sulfadiazine cream, and another 110 patients to tea tree oil regimen, which included the use of 10 tea tree oil cream and 5 body wash. 56 of the patients who received standard treatment were healed, and 46 of the patients who received tea tree oil treatment healed. The researchers conclude that there was no significant difference between these two regimens in terms of their efficacy. However, since muciprocin was found to be more effective at clearing nasal MRSA carriage (78 as compared to 47 by tea tree oil), and tea tree oil was found to be more effective in dealing with superficial skin lesions, an implication here could be that better results can be obtained through a regimen that combines muciprocin and tea tree oil. It must be noted though that a significant proportion of MRSA are resistant to muciprocin as well. In the opinion of the authors of this study, tea tree preparations proved to be effective, safe and well tolerated and could be considered in regimens for eradication of MRSA carriage. Where this study has failed is in following up the treated patients to observe the degree of repeated outbreaks. The main disadvantage of the standard drug therapy is that it allows for repeated occurrences of the infection, whereas such a problem is not usually associated with tea tree oil. So, although the study suggests that both the standard drug therapy and tea tree oil therapy are more or less equally effective (or equally ineffective considering the other half of the patients on whom they had no effect), tea tree oil could be vastly more preferable to drugs inasmuch as it actually heals the patients and does not offer simply temporary relief from symptoms. An interesting angle in such studies would be to try to determine, so far as it is possible, what kind of patients tend to be more susceptible to tea tree oil, and what kind to the standard drugs. An investigation of why nearly half of the patients did not respond to the therapy can give many insights, though this could be hard to determine.
In vitro studies have shown tea tree oil to be more efficacious than vancomycin in treating MRSA.
In a study that is currently underway, the efficacy of a 5 tea tree oil wash is being compared with a standard body wash on ICU patients who have newly acquired MRSA. This study would be completed toward the end of 2010 (Reuters Health, 2009).
Potential Adverse Effects Concerns
When used in the prescribed manner, tea tree oil has no known side effects.
The main concern here is that of MRSA acquiring resistance to tea tree oil. If tree tea oil begins to be widely used for MRSA infections, as is generally expected, measures must be taken to prevent the conditions that can be favorable for MRSA gaining tea tree oil resistance. However, quite apart from the health care settings, a serious issue with tea tree oil is that it is used in minute quantities in a plethora of household beauty and daily care products, and experts fear that this will invariably lead to tea tree oil resistance in MRSA since a great number of normal, healthy people are colonized by these germs. Taking this fact into consideration, we can suppose that tea tree oil too can be rendered ineffective against MRSA in a decade or two from now, as even most antibiotics are today. However, a new generation of drugs are expected to be discovered in the coming years, and tea-tree oil could work as an effective remedy at least till then.
History
Tea Tree is a native plant of Australia, originally belonging to northeast coastal region of New South Wales, Australia. Even at present Melaleuca alternifolia is only cultivated in Australia and California, though other variants of the tea tree are grown in a few other parts of the world.
The Bundjalung aborigines of Australia have for centuries made use of the tea tree oil for therapeutic purposes. It was used to treat colds and coughs, heal wounds and skin ailments, sores, cuts and burns. The leaves were crushed and inhaled or soaked to make an infusion, leaf washes and mudpacks were applied on areas of skin where treatment was required.
The world did not know about tea tree or even Australia until Captain James Cook discovered the continent in the 18th century. The captain and his companions, however, did not realize the medicinal properties of the tea tree leaves, they were merely used as a substitute for tea leaves, and hence the name mixed with spruce leaves they were also used to prepare a substitute for beer. The therapeutic nature of the oil extracted from tea tree leaves was revealed to the world by the explorer and researcher Arthur Penfield during 1920s and 30s. In 1930, a Sydney surgeon used the tea tree oil to clean a wound, and published the first paper in a medical journal regarding the potential benefits of this substance. A considerable amount of research ensued.
Tea tree oil began to be commercially produced in plantations and was used in the Second World War as a disinfectant, mainly in the Australian army. In the post-war years came the antibiotics and sulfa drugs revolution, and tea tree oil did not stand much of a chance against them. Then in the 70s and 80s interest in natural healing products was revived and tea tree oil began to draw attention. The commercial production was ramped up.
Of late, tea tree oil has become a popular medical substance, mainly because of its incorporation into a few household products such as soaps and shampoos, and its supposedly miraculous efficacy in fighting MRSA.
Chemistry
Tea tree oil contains nearly 100 compounds called terpines or monterpinoids, with the main constituent being terpinen-4-ol which imparts the tea tree oil many of its antibacterial and antifungal properties. Another ingredient, cineole, has antifungal properties. Synergistic action from many of the other terpenes is possible. About 50 of the monoterpinoids are oxygenated, and the remaining are hydrocarbons.
The exact proportions of terpinen-4-ol, cineole and other active components in tea tree oil can vary depending upon the source of production, the ranges normally being 30-48 terpinen-4-ol, 10 28 -terpinene, 5 13 -terpinene, 0 15 1,8-cineole, 1.5 5 -terpinolene, 1.5 8 -terpineol, 1 6 -pinene and 0.5 8 p-cymene. The above ingredients generally comprise up to 90 of the oil.
Conditions indicated for
A host of microorganisms are susceptible to tea tree oil
gram positive bacteria (Staphyloccus aureus, Staphyloccus epidermidis, Staphyloccus pneumoniae, Staphyloccus faecalis, Staphyloccus pyrogenes, Staphyloccus agalactiae, Propioni-bacterium acnes, Betahaemolytic streptococcus),
gram negative bacteria (Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniac, Citrobactor ssp, Shigella sonnei, Proteus mirabilis, Legionella ssp, Pseudomonas aeruginosa)
and fungi (Trichophyton mentagrophytes, Trichophyton rubrum, Aspergillus niger,, Aspergillus flavus, Candida albicans, Microsporum canis, Microsporum gypseum, Thermoactinomycetes vulgaris.)
As such, tea tree oil can be useful in dealing with an impressive range of medical problems, but is most commonly used in dermatological conditions such as acne, candidiasis, herpes, and wounds associated with MRSA. The skin conditions responsive to tea tree oil also include abscesses, warts, athletes foot (tinea pedis), eczema, psoriasis, jock itch, blisters, burns, cold sores, mouth ulcers, gingivitis, lice, dandruff, insect bites, rashes (nappy rash), spots, verrucae, and general wounds. It is also used in cosmetics for general skin care.
Tea tree oil can work in many illnesses of the respiratory system asthma, bronchitis, catarrh, coughs, sinusitis, tuberculosis, and whooping cough and the genito-urinary system thrush, vaginitis, cystitis, pruitis.
In the capacity of an anti-viral, tea tree oil can combat some common infectious diseases such as measles, chicken pox, flu, cold and shingles.
Tea tree oil can be used in boosting immune system and thereby preventing many types of infections. The possible application of this oil in conditions associated with AIDS is also being investigated.
Safety factors
Tea tree oil should not be ingested orally. It can be toxic when consumed internally, but the toxicity depends upon the level of concentration. Although some people advocate internal usage, most doctors recommend using it only topically. Tea tree oil is effective even in very tiny doses.
Tea tree oil can cause allergic reactions. People with sensitive skin should introduce the oil with caution. At first, only a small amount has to be applied on normal skin surface to test for sensitivity.
Tea tree oil may cause hearing loss when used in ears except in very diluted forms.
Maleleuca (Australian) tea tree oil can be confused with Manuka (New Zealand) tea tree oil, both of which are wholly different from one another. One has to take care that the tea tree oil being used is Maleleuca alternifolia. Tea tree oil should not also be confused with Chinese tea oil, cajeput oil, kanuka oil, ti tree oil, and niauouli oil.
Tea tree oil is not a home remedy it is always advisable to consult a physician before using it in moderate to serious cases of infection.
While 100 pure tea tree oil can be used on non-sensitive skin, it is generally advisable to use it in diluted forms, especially in the case of children or pregnant women. Over-the-counter formulations of tea tree oil, such as those used for acne, normally come in 5 concentrations.
In the context of MRSA, care has to be exercised to ensure that the levels of concentration do not fall below 4. Because over-diluted solutions can help create bacterial resistance instead of killing the germs, which is a major concern.
MRSA
In the 1950s, antibiotics heralded a medical revolution that promised to completely subdue infectious diseases. However, just within a decade it was realized that the bacteria started developing resistance against the new drugs. Today, many of the well-known antibiotics of yesteryear are being rendered ineffective. Common infections that could be cured with ease some decades ago are posing a major threat at present. Diseases that were thought to be nearly eradicated in the Western hemisphere, such as tuberculosis, are on an alarming rise.
Staphylococcus aureus is a common bacterium that usually colonizes the epithelial surfaces of humans. S. aureus resides on human skin and inside the nose, causing no infection. However, it can lead to simple problems like pimples and can occasionally even cause serious infections like pneumonia. MRSA is the drug-resistant strain of this bacterium. It can be referred to as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or multi-drug resistant Staphylococcus aureus, and is commonly called simply as staph. MRSA has proved resistant to a broad class of antibiotics known as beta-lactam antibiotics, which includes penicillin derivatives penams, such as methicillin, oxacillin, cloxacillin, nafcillin cephalosporins, monobactams, and carbapenems. There are still a few antibiotics, however, that can act upon MRSA, most prominent among them being vancomycin. However these antibiotics are very expensive and have limited efficacy in that they can only temporarily cure the infection.
Normally, people may harbor MRSA on their bodies without this leading to any complications such people are said to be colonized by the bacteria. But MRSA can become infectious when there occurs a wound or a lesion on the skin. In a post-operative situation, this can become a particularly serious issue, through complicating the healing of surgical sites. MRSA often does cause enormous nuisance for hospitalized patients, causing much pain and trauma. Since, until recently at least, MRSA infections have been mainly prevalent only in hospital settings, it is known as a nosocomial or a hospital-associated infection (HA-MRSA). Hospitalized patients with open wounds or depressed immune systems are very vulnerable to contracting virulent MRSA infections. In the recent times, however, MRSA infections are increasingly occurring outside of healthcare settings, they are known as community-acquired MRSA (CA-MRSA) infections, and are a cause of grave concern. CA-MRSA can be more virulent than HA-MRSA but is susceptible to treatment by common medications such as tetracyclines and sulfa drugs.
After the onset of infection, MRSA progresses rapidly within first 24 to 48 hours and just after 72 hours can take a firm hold in the body becoming resistant to simple treatments. Initial symptoms of the infection are eruptions of small red bumps on the body frequently accompanied by more widespread skin rashes and a fever. As the infection flares up, by the end of 3rd or 4th day, the bumps turn into much larger and more painful bloated pus-filled boils. MRSA can lead to sepsis, toxic shock syndrome, and necrotizing pneumonia. In some cases, the patient may die.
Rationale for using tea tree oil for MRSA
Antibiotic treatment for MRSA is very expensive. But aside from the cost factor, patients are increasingly reporting frustration and dissatisfaction with it. Although the antibiotics may relieve the patient of the excruciating symptoms of the infection by killing the bacteria, upon stopping the treatment the bacteria can re-colonize and re-infect the patient. For the antibiotics to really work, very soon after the disappearance of the symptoms the patient should recover the strength of his immune system, get the wounds healed and regain normalcy in other ways so that though the colonization would happen MRSA would not be in a position to infect the patient. But this can be expected to happen only with a certain fraction of the patients. For others antibiotic treatment can make way for repeated outbreaks and more rounds of antibiotics and even surgeries, creating untold misery. Besides, increasingly patients are reporting that the drugs are simply not working against MRSA, even in relieving the symptoms even after weeks and weeks of treatment. Considering that generally both standard drugs and tea tree oil are not effective in all the cases they are used, the apparently decreasing rate of efficacy of antibiotics is nonetheless disappointing.
It is in this context that the use of tea tree oil for MRSA becomes increasingly relevant. Tea tree oil costs barely a minuscule fraction of that of the standard antibiotic treatment. Tea tree oil not can only heals the MRSA wounds, but usually it can heal them remarkably quickly, just in a matter of a few days.
As Carson et al. (2006) conclude in their review of medical properties of tea tree oil
A paradigm shift in the treatment of infectious diseases is necessary to prevent antibiotics becoming obsolete, and where appropriate, alternatives to antibiotics ought to be considered. There are already several nonantibiotic approaches to the treatment and prevention of infection, including probiotics, phages, and phytomedicines. Alternative therapies are viewed favorably by many patients because they are often not being helped by conventional therapy and they believe there are fewer detrimental side effects. In addition, many report significant improvement while taking complementary and alternative medicines.
We my indeed be approaching a post-antibiotic era.
Mode of application
MRSA infection manifests as boils and wounds over the body. They can be treated by simply dabbing 5 tea tree oil over them. Alternatively, skin can washed in tea tree oil, or the area of the wound can be briefly submerged in water mixed with a few drops of the oil, or a few drops of the oil can be dropped on the boil and covered with a Band-aid. For nasal usage, tea tree oil can be applied in the form of ointment. The exposure of wounds to tea tree oil needs to be carried out 2-3 times a day until the results show.
Expected Results and Clinical Evidence
The patient can expect to be completely healed.
In the recent years there have been several in vitro and in vivo studies that support the claims of many tea tree oil users who have become its fans. The first notable study was by Carson et al. in 1995. They sought to determine the susceptibility of MRSA to tea tree oil by disc diffusion and broth dilution methods. All the 60 MRSA isolates tested against tea tree oil showed positive results.
A 1999 - 2000 study by Caelli et al. found that a 4 tea tree oil nasal ointment and 5 tea tea oil body combination worked better than the combination of 2 muciprocin nasal ointment and triclosan body wash for eradication of MRSA carriage. However, as this experiment was only carried out only on a small number of patients (30), the results are not statistically significant.
A significant study in a clinical setting was conducted in 2004 by Dryden et al. They subjected 114 MRSA patients to a standard drug regimen which included the use of muciprocin nasal ointment, chlorhexidine gluconate soap and silver sulfadiazine cream, and another 110 patients to tea tree oil regimen, which included the use of 10 tea tree oil cream and 5 body wash. 56 of the patients who received standard treatment were healed, and 46 of the patients who received tea tree oil treatment healed. The researchers conclude that there was no significant difference between these two regimens in terms of their efficacy. However, since muciprocin was found to be more effective at clearing nasal MRSA carriage (78 as compared to 47 by tea tree oil), and tea tree oil was found to be more effective in dealing with superficial skin lesions, an implication here could be that better results can be obtained through a regimen that combines muciprocin and tea tree oil. It must be noted though that a significant proportion of MRSA are resistant to muciprocin as well. In the opinion of the authors of this study, tea tree preparations proved to be effective, safe and well tolerated and could be considered in regimens for eradication of MRSA carriage. Where this study has failed is in following up the treated patients to observe the degree of repeated outbreaks. The main disadvantage of the standard drug therapy is that it allows for repeated occurrences of the infection, whereas such a problem is not usually associated with tea tree oil. So, although the study suggests that both the standard drug therapy and tea tree oil therapy are more or less equally effective (or equally ineffective considering the other half of the patients on whom they had no effect), tea tree oil could be vastly more preferable to drugs inasmuch as it actually heals the patients and does not offer simply temporary relief from symptoms. An interesting angle in such studies would be to try to determine, so far as it is possible, what kind of patients tend to be more susceptible to tea tree oil, and what kind to the standard drugs. An investigation of why nearly half of the patients did not respond to the therapy can give many insights, though this could be hard to determine.
In vitro studies have shown tea tree oil to be more efficacious than vancomycin in treating MRSA.
In a study that is currently underway, the efficacy of a 5 tea tree oil wash is being compared with a standard body wash on ICU patients who have newly acquired MRSA. This study would be completed toward the end of 2010 (Reuters Health, 2009).
Potential Adverse Effects Concerns
When used in the prescribed manner, tea tree oil has no known side effects.
The main concern here is that of MRSA acquiring resistance to tea tree oil. If tree tea oil begins to be widely used for MRSA infections, as is generally expected, measures must be taken to prevent the conditions that can be favorable for MRSA gaining tea tree oil resistance. However, quite apart from the health care settings, a serious issue with tea tree oil is that it is used in minute quantities in a plethora of household beauty and daily care products, and experts fear that this will invariably lead to tea tree oil resistance in MRSA since a great number of normal, healthy people are colonized by these germs. Taking this fact into consideration, we can suppose that tea tree oil too can be rendered ineffective against MRSA in a decade or two from now, as even most antibiotics are today. However, a new generation of drugs are expected to be discovered in the coming years, and tea-tree oil could work as an effective remedy at least till then.
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