07 Apr Bees: Providing us with an effective defence against viruses

Bees are irreplaceable helpers of the human race. As an essential part of our ecosystem, they pollinate our fruits and vegetables, pollinate the food for animals to eat, and produce products such as honey and wax.

But there’s another bee product whose praises often go unsung: propolis.

Propolis is the resinous substance produced by honeybees. Worker bees collect resins from leaf and flower buds and cracks in the bark of various trees. They transport them to their hives by carrying them in their corbicula, the pollen basket on their hind legs. Then they mix them with wax and saliva to produce propolis, which they can use it as an antimicrobial sealing material to fill cracks and holes in the beehive. In addition to being a useful building and insulating material for the hive, the antibacterial properties of the propolis can help keep a low level of bacteria and fungi in the hive and stop diseases and parasites from entering.

The use of propolis by humans dates back for centuries. Ancient Egyptians used it to embalm cadavers in the mummification process. Hippocrates, the ancient Greek physician who was one of the most influential figures in the history of medicine, wrote about how he used propolis as a cure for swellings and ulcers.  

With a complex chemical composition, typically made up of more than 200 different substances, propolis possesses remarkable antiviral and antimicrobial properties. Modern scientists have researched the many ways it can be used to advance topical skin treatments.

Crucially the composition of propolis varies with the particular plants from which it is comprised. And one doctor, pursuing a lifelong fascination, discovered a specific form of propolis, gathered by bees from one species of tree that could help billions of people: the two-thirds of the world’s population who are potential sufferers from cold sores.

The mind behind Propolis ACF®

Dr Zenon Michael Sosnowski was a pioneer of using propolis to treat skin disorders. Working in an American field hospital in Nuremberg, Germany, during the 1950s, Dr Sosnowski first developed his interest in medical sciences. It was this passion that motivated him in 1964 to immigrate to Winnipeg, Canada, where his love for medical research grew while he was working at the Children’s Hospital and General Hospital of Winnipeg.

Further work as a lecturer at the University of Manitoba provided him with the foundation to continue with his independent research. And in a stroke of fortune, it would be trees from Manitoba that provided the propolis that would lead to Dr Sosnowski’s greatest discovery.

In the 1980s, he set up his own research company: API-Remedica Industries, dedicated to the research and development of natural health products, using purified propolis extract as the active ingredient in health foods, nutraceuticals, and cosmetics.   

Dr Sosnowski has now passed on. But he has left a valuable legacy, represented in part by a pharmaceutical company from the UK, DTC Healthcare, which continues to learn from his research and utilise propolis in a clinically proven, highly effective cold sore ointment: Herstat®.

Herstat contains Propolis ACF (Antiviral Complex of Flavonoids), the purified propolis extract that was developed by Dr Sosnowski and which is still produced in a laboratory in Canada. But what exactly goes into its production?

Extracting Propolis ACF

The manufacture of Propolis ACF involves a highly complex extraction process developed by Sosnowski over many years.

The key elements in the propolis used in Herstat are resins gathered by bees from the Canadian poplar trees, a species of willow that flourish in Manitoba.

Beekeepers collect propolis from hives by various means including the use of propolis traps, thin plastic sheets with rows of narrow slits that sit at the top of the hive. The bees seal up all the slits with propolis (similar to how they would seal up any openings in the hive).

When propolis is warm, it’s soft and sticky, but at colder temperatures, it turns brittle. If the traps are placed in a freezer, the propolis hardens and can be easily removed.

Once the propolis is removed from the trap, the raw propolis is washed with distilled water, dried, and then dissolved in ethanol. The solution is chilled and filtered at low temperature. This filtration process removes beeswax and eliminates protein. The solution is then evaporated in a Buchi evaporator to produce the purified Propolis ACF, the essential ingredient in Herstat cold sore ointment.

A common virus affecting billions

There’s plenty of reasons why implementing bee products to improve outcomes for patients is an exciting prospect. We only need to look at the conditions propolis could treat to understand how valuable it is.

The herpes simplex virus (HSV) is a persistent annoyance for countless people. There are two main types of HSV: HSV-1, which causes cold sores and is the most common, and HSV-2, which causes genital herpes and is less widespread.  

It’s easy for anyone to become infected with HSV-1, and it can often happen after close contact with a loved one or relative who is infected. During the initial primary infection, usually occurring in childhood, the HSV-1 latches on and penetrates a cell and replicates inside the nucleus, and the infection then spreads by invading new cells.

For many, the virus lies dormant in the ganglia, located at the top of the spinal column, and is controlled by the immune system. In a lot of cases, the HSV-1 won’t reactivate (meaning most carriers aren’t even aware they have it).

The World Health Organisation estimates that an astounding 67% of the world’s population carry the HSV-1 virus, but only a fifth of these carriers will ever display symptoms. In those who do, certain triggers that affect the immune system – these include overexposure to sunlight, stress, menstruation, other illness, or eating foods that are high in L-arginine – are liable to reactivate the virus and cause a resurgence of the sores.

Every sufferer is different, and some sufferers experience only very infrequent cold sores, but many others will have to put up with recurrent outbreaks throughout their whole life.

A cold sore outbreak happens in stages. At the beginning of a cycle, there is usually a short prodromal phase characterised by local tingling and itching at the site, which is usually on the lips. The painful blisters that are synonymous with cold sores then form soon after. Next, the blisters will erupt, weeping fluid – this is the point when the virus is the most contagious. The site will eventually scab and crust over.

Until the site has fully healed, sufferers remain contagious and have to avoid close contact with loved ones. Severe cases can cause significant pain. Coupled with the unsightly cosmetic appearance, can lead to emotional distress.

As there is no known cure for cold sores and an outbreak can last for up to two weeks, a successful treatment that improves symptoms as rapidly as possible and keeps repeated outbreaks under control is much sought after.

It’s good news, then, that thanks to the bees, the virus may well have met its match.

The science behind the miracle ingredient

Propolis ACF could be the answer to cold sore sufferers’ prayers because it is made up of plant-derived compounds known as phenolics, which include flavonoids, and other helpful compounds and essential oils that act as an excellent remedy for viruses and can fight against harmful bacteria.

Phenolics and flavonoids can interfere with the virus’s ability to penetrate cells in the early stages of an infection and help prevent the virus from replicating inside infected cells. They also protect against bacterial infections such as Staphylococcus aureus, which causes common skin infections including pimples, boils, and abscesses; the food poisoning bacterium E. coli; and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which can cause very serious infections in humans, including various sepsis syndromes.

Other benefits of phenolics include having anaesthetic effects, which reduce local pain. Their ability to increase cell metabolism and mitotic activity gives them healing properties. And because they inhibit the production of pro-inflammatory mediators they have anti-inflammatory properties too.

Propolis put to the test

The efficacy of propolis has been put to the test in two clinical trials. One clinical study, conducted in Sweden between October 1999 and December 2000, was a placebo-controlled clinical study where all participants suffered from recurrent cold sore outbreaks (at least three episodes a year). The trial aimed to evaluate whether propolis could make any significant difference to the total healing time and time until the pain had subsided.

From a total of 68 patients, 33 were told to apply Herstat as soon as they felt the telltale tingling that signalled an oncoming outbreak. The 35 members of the other group were given a placebo to apply, which contained the ointment base used in Herstat without the active ingredient Propolis ACF. All other medications that participants may have previously used for their lesions were prohibited.

As this was a double-blind trial, neither the researchers nor participants knew which group was receiving which treatment. The ointments were applied five times daily until the cold sore healed, with all participants keeping a cold sore diary, reporting the stage that the cold sore was in, the size of the lesion, and the intensity of the pain they were in at each application.

The findings were encouraging. The Herstat group reported a shorter healing time – an average of 3.53 days earlier than the placebo group, with the Herstat group’s symptoms healing after an average of 6.24 days and the placebo group healing after an average of 9.77 days. This suggested that the Propolis ACF could be responsible for relieving symptoms quickly and shortening the overall time of the outbreak.

What’s more, all of the Herstat patients were free of pain by the seventh day of their outbreak, whereas 22.9% of the placebo group were still reporting pain at the same stage.

After the patients were clear of symptoms, they were asked to rate the treatment’s effectiveness. Most of those (60%) who had used the placebo rated it as “hardly effective”, while 23% found it to be completely “ineffective”. Only a small percentage (5.7%) felt that the placebo was “very effective” against their outbreak.

The responses from the sufferers who used the Propolis ACF-infused ointment were almost the complete opposite.

The vast majority (82%) rated Herstat as “very effective”, while the remaining 18% found it “somewhat effective”. No one in the propolis group felt that the ointment was ineffective.

All members in the propolis group felt that the ointment reduced the intensity of pain. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority, 94%, said they would use the treatment in the future. Almost the exact opposite was true for the placebo group, with 94.3% saying they wouldn’t use the medication again.

The study concluded that because of the vast range of antiviral, anaesthetic, anti-inflammatory, and antimicrobial healing properties of propolis, cold sore treatments using the ingredient could be effectively applied at any time during the cold sore’s life cycle, from the initial tingling stage to when the sore scabs over.

This sets it apart from other topical antivirals such as acyclovir and penciclovir. Studies have shown that they must be applied early on in the initial tingling phase to have any beneficial effects. And this phase tends to be over with so quickly that it can be easily missed if the sufferer doesn’t have the treatment immediately to hand.

The results of this study were duplicated by Dr Sosnowski in his own, unpublished research at the University of Manitoba. His trial strongly supported the efficacy of propolis in the alleviation of cold sores, with the treatment group showing a vastly faster improvement in symptoms than the placebo group. 

It should also be noted that in both of these trials, no adverse side effects to the propolis treatment were reported by any of the participants, suggesting this incredible natural ingredient poses no risk to the skin. Propolis can help with more than just cold sores. Its natural antioxidant activity can help prevent the widespread annoyance of dry, chapped lips and protect the skin from damage due to UV rays.

Bees: on the frontline in the fight against viruses

Propolis from bees has plenty of potential for helping conditions besides cold sores. Further recent pilot studies suggest that the healing properties of propolis could be useful against chronic wounds, including diabetic leg ulcers and bed sores, helping the wounds resolve and accelerating the repair of the tissue when used in conjunction with conventional treatments.  

Diabetes is highly prevalent among the global population and diabetic ulcers often prove extremely difficult to heal and can remain unresponsive to treatment for years. Enhancing the efficacy of the treatment methods with propolis could therefore have a major impact and bring cost efficiencies to the health service globally.

So the next time you think about all the many wonderful things we have to thank bees for, make sure you don’t leave Propolis ACF off your list, especially if you’re a frequent cold sore sufferer. Viruses such as HSV and its unpleasant symptoms cause great discomfort and damage people’s confidence. But topical creams containing propolis that are easy to apply and can speed up healing have the potential to improve lives all over the world.

Who would have thought that one of the most effective treatments would come from these most amazing creatures?