An earplug with antibacterial agents from essential oil is currently being developed in Iceland as an alternative method to cure ear infections in children. The goal is for this method to replace the conventional use of antibiotics, and results look promising.
The photo is unrelated to the story. By Páll Stefánsson.
Professor Karl G. Kristinsson, who is the senior physician at the Landspítali national hospital’s department of pathology, has worked on the development of the idea, which originally came from inventor Gudrún Saemundsdóttir, Fréttabladid reports.
Saemundsdóttir had turned to natural medicine because her daughter suffered from a chronic ear infection and conventional treatments proved ineffective.
“I tried basil and other essential oils. I wet some cotton and put it into my daughter’s ears and she was cured in a matter of two days,” Saemundsdóttir explained.
She contacted Kristinsson, who tested the oil in a laboratory and then decided to undertake further scientific studies.
After the earplug they developed is placed inside the ear, the agents are carried through the eardrum and into the middle ear where they kill the bacteria. They are effective against all bacteria that cause ear infections, including bacteria immune to most medicine.
