Irish Bog Plant Revives Ancient Remedy as a New Weapon Vs Superbugs

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://phys.org/news/2026-04-irish-bog-revives-ancient-remedy.html

Long before we had modern antibiotics to rely on, people often turned to traditional medicines from plants to treat infections.

The root of tormentil (Potentilla erecta), a small yellow wildflower that grows across Ireland, the UK and Europe, was used for centuries in Irish and European traditional medicine. It was used to treat wounds, sore throats, diarrhea and gum disease. These traditional uses suggested that tormentil could contain compounds powerful enough to kill microbes.

Our latest research has now shown that not only does tormentil have antimicrobial activity, it may also be powerful enough to fight microbes that are resistant to modern antibiotics.

Antimicrobial resistance is a growing global threat. This occurs when bacteria evolve to survive the drugs used to treat common infections. This makes some infections very difficult and sometimes impossible to treat. Antimicrobial resistance could be pushing us back to a time when once treatable infections could again become deadly.

Researchers are therefore searching for new antimicrobial compounds. Plants are a promising source, having evolved over millennia to produce a wide range of bioactive chemicals to defend themselves against microbes.

In our recent study, we investigated whether various Irish bogland plants contain compounds that could help fight multi-drug resistant bacteria.

[...] Excitingly, our initial screening showed that tormentil extracts were antimicrobial and limited the formation of biofilms. This suggested these extracts contained compounds with antimicrobial activity, which may explain their historical use to treat infection.

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