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posted by janrinok on Sunday October 30 2016, @06:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the brb-I-have-to-go dept.

Among older women residing in nursing homes, administration of cranberry capsules compared with placebo resulted in no significant difference in presence of bacteriuria plus pyuria (presence of bacteria and white blood cells in the urine, a sign of urinary tract infection [UTI]), or in the number of episodes of UTIs over 1 year, according to a study published online by JAMA. The study is being released to coincide with its presentation at IDWeek 2016.

Urinary tract infection is the most commonly diagnosed infection among nursing home residents. Bacteriuria is prevalent in 25 percent to 50 percent of women living in nursing homes, and pyuria is present in 90 percent of those with bacteriuria. Cranberry capsules are an understudied, nonantimicrobial prevention strategy used in this population. Manisha Juthani-Mehta, M.D., of the Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn., and colleagues randomly assigned 185 women (average age, 86 years; with or without bacteriuria plus pyuria at study entry) residing in nursing homes to two oral cranberry capsules, each capsule containing 36 mg of the active ingredient proanthocyanidin (i.e., 72 mg total, equivalent to 20 ounces of cranberry juice) or placebo administered once a day.

Another folk remedy bites the dust?


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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday October 30 2016, @06:58PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 30 2016, @06:58PM (#420600) Journal

    "Was not done" is too severe. The accurate statement is "There's no indication in the summary that this was done.".

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  • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday October 30 2016, @07:19PM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday October 30 2016, @07:19PM (#420606) Homepage

    Still, that's kind of like trying to prove that vaping Marijuana causes lung-cancer by having your test subjects smoke joints.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday October 30 2016, @10:43PM

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Sunday October 30 2016, @10:43PM (#420686) Journal

    Yes, it wasn't done in this study. See the linked Cochrane review in my previous post, or see the JAMA editorial [jamanetwork.com] which accompanied this article for details of other studies which did use actual cranberry juice.

    For a brief history, originally cranberry juice was hypothesized to help based on its ability to lower urine pH. But studies showed that the effect was too small to even theoretically affect UTIs unless people drank WAY more cranberry juice than was reasonable. Thus, they started looking into more targeted possible causes for effects, hence capsules that concentrate the substances that some people have hypothesized are the "active" ones that help with UTIs. (In the present case, the capsules contained more of the hypothesized "active" ingredient than would be reasonable for most people to consume, equivalent to drinking ~20 ounces of pure cranberry juice each day... and not that sweet "cocktail" that only contains maybe 1/4 cranberry juice.)

    Another reason for the capsules is that cranberry juice studies apparently tend to have a very high non-compliance rate -- i.e., a lot of people just don't like drinking it all the time, and they simply stop. This obviously creates potential data issues.

    Bottom line: they've tried giving people the juice. They've tried the capsules. They've tried both on female college students, old women, pretty much all common subpopulations. Most studies show no significant results at all, and the few that did tend to have methodological problems which mostly have disappeared in subsequent better studies. The JAMA editorial mentions one remaining subpopulation which still has a statistically significant positive effect -- women with recent gynecological surgery. However, the study that showed the effect had various methodological problems, so the effect still needs confirmation.