Science backs claim cranberry
juice good for bladder health
By Charlyn Fargo, CNS

Your mother probably told you this: Cranberry juice helps bladder infections. A new study backs up mom's wisdom.

Researchers from the University of Washington found that drinking 8 ounces of cranberry juice works better than 4 ounces in combating the bacteria that cause most urinary tract infections.

The team collected urine from three volunteers before and four to six hours after consumption of 27 percent cranberry juice cocktail. E. coli bacteria (the most common cause of urinary tract infection) were incubated in the urine samples and combined with human bladder cells.

The amount of bacteria sticking to the bladder cells was significantly reduced after the bacteria were incubated in urine from women who drank the cranberry juice cocktail, and that effect was twofold greater after 8 ounces of cranberry juice cocktail was consumed than it was after 4 ounces was consumed. The findings were reported at the Annual Meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

The U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine of the National Institutes of Health is further investigating the length of time that the antibacterial activity of cranberry juice lasts, the magnitude of activity with additional doses, and the effects of concurrent food ingestion.

It is thought that a specific type of tannin found only in cranberries and blueberries interacts with the little projections on the E. coli, preventing them from sticking to the walls of the bladder and causing infection.

Researchers at the University of Washington plan to repeat the study with larger groups of women.

"The next step is to evaluate our findings in a larger group of women, and then conduct a trial to help determine if the laboratory findings translate into clinical differences in the rate of (urinary tract infection) depending on the dosage of cranberry consumed," said Dr Kalpana Gupta, principal investigator of the University of Washington study. - www.foodnavigator.com. [Charlyn Fargo, CNS]

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