You might enjoy cranberries, but it won't cure your UTI, a new research suggests.
It is believed that consumption of cranberry products such as cranberry juice, cranberry capsules and the fruit itself was a natural way to avoid urinary tract infections, or UTI, but it seems that this is now false, as a new study seems to be debunking this longstanding preconception.
Ingestion of cranberry products in juice or capsule form has been vaunted as a legitimate means to combat recurring UTI since "at least the first half of the last century," according to the study. Back when the plateau of medicine couldn't deliver advanced methods of treatment in the underdeveloped era, where antibiotic wasn't part of the vocabulary, it was once thought that acidifying urine was the proper means to cure UTI.
Because it was thought to decrease urine pH, cranberry juice was healthily explored as a means to treat UTI in the past. Hippuric acid is formed through the metabolic process of quinic acid present in cranberry juice, a factor that contributed to the initial premise that cranberry juice can treat UTI.
However, subsequent studies have determined that the concentration of hippuric acid in the urine is too insufficient for an antibacterial effect to occur, unless consumption of cranberry juice was raised beyond normal levels, essentially rendering the preconception as snake oil.
While some studies suggest that cranberries may prevent repeated infections among younger women, researchers have discovered that residents of a nursing home who ingested high-potency cranberry capsules did not incur fewer episode of UTI than those under a placebo.
"Although our study was only in nursing home women, many other studies have been done in other populations, which have not shown a benefit," said Dr. Manisha Juthani-Mehta, the study's lead author, now published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Juthani-Mehta said that there's no reason for women who enjoy cranberry products to stop the habit. However, spending too much money on cranberry products in the hopes of curing or preventing UTI is, according to her, not worthwhile to pursue, especially for patients who snip a sizable amount off their income just to acquire the products.
A 30-day supply of cranberry capsules can shoot up to $200 upward.
"[C]ranberry products should not be recommended as a medical intervention for the prevention of UTI," said in the same journal by Dr. Lindsay E. Nicolle, a UTI expert in the University of Manitoba.
So if you're clinician happens to be promoting or even encouraging the purchase and consumption of cranberry products as a specific means to treat UTI, then you can go ahead and inform them that this age-old notion has been proven false.
"It is time to move on from cranberries," Dr. Nicolle said.
