If you grow your beard for sheer laziness and do not get time to keep it clean then it can be healthy for you-what the scientists say.
Scientists have found bacteria in beards that can be an answer to superbugs. Beard bacteria can effectively kill superbugs and it can beat medicines that are designed to destroy the superbugs.
Superbugs are methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) that cannot be killed with methicillin and related antibiotics. Over use of antibiotics for conditions in which they are not required had done a mutation in bacteria strains and thus the superbugs were formed. The antibiotic resistance in superbugs makes it harder to treat. MRSA is linked to skin infections and bloodstream infections.
A research by British government has anticipated that drug-resistant superbugs can possibly kill more than 10 million people a year by 2050.
The study was performed with samples from 20 beards and almost 25 percent of the sample showed activity against the indicator strain.
The type of bacteria from the beard was checked on an agar plate which has been pre-inoculated with an indicator strain. The researchers checked if the indicator strain can grow right near the colonies taken from the beard or other places.
The beard strain was surprisingly found to be effective in killing indicator strain and the researchers inferred that these bacteria actually produce antibiotics themselves.
Dr. Adam Roberts from University College London has been asking members of the public to send swab samples from places where bacteria can thrive, reports Metro News.
The medical science field is running short of antibiotics with only few new antibiotics developed since the 1950s and 60s. Therefore, this can be an important discovery of this era owing to the anticipation of the British government report that claims superbugs can kill 10 million people and incur a cost of $100 trillion USD by 2050.