Cranberry Juice Prevents Urinary Tract Infections

by Nikhil Sundaram    July 27, 2008

It has been a belief that Cranberry juice can help keep urinary tract infections at bay.Now a new study has confirmed this very belief.

This study was conducted by Terri Camesano, associate professor of chemical engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), and a team of graduate students.During the study it was observed that the juice changes the thermodunamic properties of bacteria in the urinary tract.This in turn creates an energy barrier which prevents them from
getting close enough to cells and initiate an infection.

Terri's team exposed two varieties of E. Coli bacteria,one having hair like projections called fimbriae and the other without,to cranberry juice.It was found by the team that for the fimbriaed bacteria even at low concentrations cranberry juice altered two
properties that serve as indicators of the ability of bacteria to attach to cells.

The first factor called Gibbs free energy of attachment is a measure of the amount of energy that must be expended before a bacterium can attach to a cell.This factor was a negative number without cranberry juice indicating that energy would be released and attachment to cells were highly likely.With cranberry juice the number was positive and also grew steadily as the concentration of the juice increased,making attachment to urinary tract cells too unlikely.

"Our results show that, at least for urinary tract infections, cranberry juice targets the right bacteria - those that cause disease - but has no effect on non-pathogenic organisms, suggesting that cranberry juice will not disrupt bacteria that are part of the normal flora in the gut," Camesano said.

The report of the study has been published in the journal Colloids and Surfaces.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

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