Cranberry Juice May Fight Intestinal Bugs
(HealthDayNews, 6/7/05)

Patrice Cohen, an undergraduate researcher at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, and team, exposed laboratory cell cultures of SA-11, an intestinal monkey rotavirus, and a pool of goat intestinal viruses to cranberry juice. The investigators found that the juice immediately stopped the SA-11 virus from infecting host cells or attaching to red blood cells. When the team exposed one virus sample to cranberry juice and another to a comparable amount of liquid with the same pH, the juice produced a 100 % reduction in the virus; whereas the other liquid with the same pH as the juice reduce infectivity by only 34 %. These findings suggest that it is something more than just the pH of the cranberries that is responsible for fighting the gastrointestinal viruses.