“Essential Oils
Might be the New Antibiotics”, published in The Atlantic Journal, January 16, 2015
and written by Tori Rodriguez.
“The
loss of antibiotics due to antimicrobial resistance is potentially one of the
most important challenges the medical and animal-health communities will face
in the 21st century,” says Dr. Cyril Gay, the senior national program leader at
the USDA Agricultural Research Service.
Livestock
consume up to 80 percent of the antibiotics used in the U.S, according to a recent FDA report. This rampant use of the drugs has
led to “superbugs” that are becoming increasingly resistant to the antibiotics
that are used to treat not just farm animals, but humans as well. Almost 70
percent of the antibiotics given to these animals are classified as “medically
important” for humans. In the U.S., antibiotic resistance caused more than two million illnesses in 2013, according to a
report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and an estimated
23,000 deaths. And it will only get worse: a recent report commissioned by the U.K. government
estimates that drug-resistant microbes could cause more than 10 million deaths
and cost the global economy $100 trillion by the year 2050.
Dr.
Stuart B. Levy, director of the Center for Adaptation, Genetics, and Drug
Resistance, led a study and found that chickens developed resistance to the
antibiotic tetracycline at a rapid pace–within a week, the animals had
resistant bacteria in their gut. Months later, the resistant bacteria had
spread to untreated chickens and even the farmers. And what was frightening was
that those resistant bacteria also became resistant to other antibiotics that
the chickens hadn’t even consumed!
Several
studies done by the USDA have shown great promise in using essential oils as an
alternative to antibiotics in livestock. One of their studies, published in October 2014 in the journal Poultry Science, found that
chickens who consumed feed with added oregano oil had a 59 percent lower
mortality rate due to ascites, a common infection in poultry, than untreated
chickens.
Researchers
have also directly compared the effects of commonly used antibiotics with those
of various essential oils. One such study, from the March 2012 issue of the Journal of Animal Science, found that
rosemary and oregano oils resulted in the same amount of growth in chickens as
the antibiotic avilamycin, and that the oils killed bacteria, too. Additional findings have shown that essential oils help
reduce salmonella in chickens, and that a blend of several oils can limit the
spread of salmonella among animals. One of the co-authors of that study, Dr.
Charles Hofacre, a professor at the University of Georgia’s College of
Veterinary Medicine, says it’s such a new area of research that they don’t yet
know exactly how the essential oils work, but “there is some strong evidence
that they are functioning by both an antibacterial action in the intestine and
also some have an effect to stimulate the intestinal cells’ ability to recover
from disease more quickly–either by local immunity or helping keep the
intestinal cells themselves healthier.”
Research published in December 2013 reported that
a hand gel made with lemongrass oil was effective in reducing MRSA on the skin
of human volunteers, and previous research has shown that a cleanser made with tea-tree oil
clears MRSA from the skin as effectively as the standard treatments to which
bacteria appear to be developing resistance.
Scientists
have been testing all kinds of combinations of essential oils and antibiotics,
and they’re repeatedly finding that the oils—used on their own and in
combination with some common antibiotics—can fight numerous pathogens,
including antibiotic-resistant strains of E. coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and other
common types of bacteria. Results consistently show that combining essential
oils and antibiotics significantly lowers the amount of antibiotic required to
do the job.
Dr.
Nicole M. Parrish, associate professor of pathology at the Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine and associate director of medical
mycobacteriology at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, says that essential oils
contain some of the most potent antimicrobial compounds available, and that
furthering our understanding of them may lead to the development of entirely
new classes of drugs.
One
farmer who has talked publicly about using essential oils is Scott Sechler,
owner of Bell & Evans Farms, a high-end producer of antibiotic-free
poultry. Back in 2012, he told the New York Times about
his use of oregano oil and cinnamon to fight infection on his 140 farms, with a
total of 9 million chickens. The approach worked better than all other options
he had tried, but he told the Times, “I have worried
a bit about how I’m going to sound talking about this,” adding, “But I really
do think we’re on to something here.”
“With
our chicken breed, housing environment, and feeding program, we’re able to
promote healthy gut bacteria—we use oregano oil to kill the bad bacteria and
cinnamon oil to support the good bacteria. But if you meet them halfway by
doing things right, they will carry you across the finish line,” Sechler says.
People warned him that the bacteria would become resistant to the essential
oils, too, but they haven’t yet, and his farms processed over 50 million
chickens last year (2014).
