New research carried out at Alexandria University in Egypt has found that green tea can help antibiotics be up to three times more effective at fighting drug-resistant bacteria, including superbugs.

In a country like Egypt where green tea is commonly consumed by a large portion of the population, including those taking antibiotics, the researchers wanted to find out whether green tea would have any effect on the antibiotics and whether this effect would be positive or negative.

Mervat Kaseem, of Alexandria University’s pharmacy faculty, said, ‘We tested green tea in combination with antibiotics against 28 disease-causing microorganisms belonging to two different classes. In every single case, green tea enhanced the bacteria-killing activity of the antibiotics. For example, the killing effect of chloramphenicol was 99.99 percent better when taken with green tea than when taken on its own in some circumstances’.

It was also discovered that green tea made 20 per cent of drug-resistant bacteria susceptible to cephalosporin antibiotics, to which new drug-resistant strains of bacteria have evolved resistance. In most cases, and for all types of antibiotics tested, it was found that consuming green tea in tandem with taking antibiotics appeared to increase the action of the antibiotics and reduce drug resistance in bacteria. In some instances even low concentrations of green tea were effective.

Kaseem concluded, ‘Our results show that we should consider more seriously the natural products we consume in our everyday life. In the future, we will be looking at other natural herb products such as majoram and thyme to see whether they also contain active compounds which can help in the battle against drug resistant bacteria’.