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OTTAWA - Honey for a sore throat, sure. But honey for sinusitis?

Ordinary honey kills bacteria that cause sinus infections, in many cases better than antibiotics, says a new study from the University of Ottawa.

This includes the “superbug” MRSA. And honey is effective when the bacteria form “biofilms,” or layers of living material that coat a surface (such as sinus cavities) and fight off normal drugs the way a raincoat sheds water.

So far the tests are strictly in lab dishes, not in live patients.

But testing on live patients “is very, very close,” says Dr. Talal Alandejani, a resident studying ear, nose and throat medicine at the U of O, though first they’ll do safety tests on animals. He expects it to pass these tests easily.

To reach the sinuses, “we’ll use an irrigation needle. This is not new,” he said.

“Probably in the non-medical world it sounds weird, but we’ve been irrigating with antibiotics already, so it’s the same equipment . . . we’re just going to use honey in it.”

When a sinus infection becomes chronic, it goes on for months, resisting multiple courses of pills, irrigation (squirting salt water or antibiotics into the sinuses) and even surgery.

It’s miserable. Imagine a cold that lasts the rest of your life, the doctor says. Current theory says there’s likely a biofilm fighting off treatment.

Honey, Alandejani knew, has been used for centuries to treat infected wounds and burns in much of the world. It’s the backup when antibiotics fail.

No one is sure what in the honey kills the bacteria, but something does. As well, it seems to stimulate healing in the injured tissue. And over centuries, bacteria haven’t built up resistance to honey.

Chronic sinusitis infects 31 million Americans each year, clogging up the spaces behind the forehead, nose and cheekbones.

“Growth in biofilms increases bacterial resistance to antibiotics, which may explain why CRS (chronic sinusitis) responds poorly to antibiotic therapy,” the U of O team writes.

Bacterial biofilms can also form inside water pipes, where they are notoriously hard to kill by flushing or chlorinating.

The team used two types of honey, diluted with water - a type called manuka from New Zealand, and sidr honey from Yemen. (They looked at Canadian clover and buckwheat honeys as well, but these didn’t work.)

Both manuka and sidr honeys completely killed bacteria free-floating in liquid. They didn’t kill all the bugs in a biofilm, but both still did pretty well, killing 63 to 91 per cent of different bacteria types.

These bacteria included methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a “superbug” that is highly resistant to antibiotics.

MRSA is a particular problem in hospitals, and is also common among workers on pig farms.

Antibiotics tested on the same biofilms didn’t kill as many bacteria as the honey. One type, rifampin, killed just 18 per cent of the biofilm samples, and seven more types (including vancomycin) all failed to kill any.

The results were presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, in Chicago.