Cranberry juice can’t stop infections

A new study has suggested that cranberry juice is not effective against urinary tract infections.

Drinking cranberry juice has been recommended to decrease the incidence of urinary tract infections, based on observational studies and a few small clinical trials. However, the new study suggests otherwise.

College-aged women who tested positive for having a urinary tract infection were assigned to drink eight ounces of cranberry juice or a placebo twice a day for either six months or until a recurrence of a urinary tract infection, whichever happened first.

Of the participants who suffered a second urinary tract infection, the cranberry juice drinkers had a recurrence rate of almost 20 per cent, while those who drank the placebo suffered only a 14 per cent recurrence.

“We assumed that we would observe a 30 per cent recurrence rate among the placebo group. It is possible that the placebo juice inadvertently contained the active ingredients that reduce urinary tract infection risk, since both juices contained Vitamin C,” said study author Betsy Foxman of the University of Michigan School of Public Health in Ann Arbor.

“Another possibility is that the study protocol kept participants better hydrated, leading them to urinate more frequently, therefore decreasing bacterial growth and reducing urinary tract infection symptoms,” she said.

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