Kiwi trial pits natural honey against pharmacy cold sore treatment

A newly begun study will pit a formulation of kanuka honey against the antiviral drug acyclovir, which is used in the common ointment brand Zovirax. Photo / Martin Sykes

New Zealand's natural honey products have been turned against everything from bugs to burns - now scientists will find out whether they can treat the pesky cold sores that a third of us regularly suffer from.

A newly begun study being run by the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand will pit Honevo, a formulation of kanuka honey, against the antiviral drug acyclovir, which is used in the common ointment brand Zovirax, for cold sore treatment.

A team led by medical researcher Dr Alex Semprini will evaluate which treatment more quickly heals cold sores among nearly 1000 sufferers, who will be enrolled by pharmacists throughout the country.

Dr Shaun Holt, the science director at Kiwi pharmaceutical company HoneyLab, which markets Honevo, said the study would be one of the largest clinical trials ever conducted in New Zealand.

It would also be only the second time that pharmacists have undertaken one like it.

Dr Holt said the possibility of a honey-based cold sore treatment came up six years ago while he was researching for a paper on natural products and found an obscure study from Dubai scientists suggesting their local honey as a solution.

"Based on this, I decided that honey had huge potential as a skin medicine, rather than selling jars of honey to eat, and HoneyLab was formed," he said.

"We have published an initial small pilot study which suggested that our kanuka honey formulation may be better than acyclovir, and now we are doing this [wider] study to hopefully prove it."

It was already known that honey killed the herpes simplex virus that caused cold sores, he said, but the problem was that the wounds were hard to heal.

"Honey excels in healing wounds, whereas acyclovir cream does not, and so we are very confident it will be better."

Even if it was found that Honevo was only equally as effective as acyclovir cream, this would still be an excellent outcome, given the product was 100 per cent natural, did not contribute to antiviral resistance and tasted better, he said.

Given one third of adults regularly get cold sores - and half seek treatment - the commercial opportunity was huge.

"It's a multi-billion dollar market," Dr Holt said. "Ninety per cent of people carry the virus in their lip and when you have it, you have it forever.

"In the US alone, there are over 100 million cold sore episodes a year, and the average cost of treatment is around $100 a year.

"In New Zealand we estimate that if sufferers used the product we could reduce the number of days that New Zealanders have a cold sore on their lip by over five million."

It was expected the study would be completed in less than a year, with the results to be immediately published.

Another study, recently published in the British Medical Journal, found Honevo offered a promising treatment for rosacea, a common and chronic skin condition.