Cranberry Juice Doesn’t Play A Vital Role In Preventing Urinary Tract Infections

According to a latest research on cranberry juice, it has been proved that "cranberry juice cannot currently be recommended for the prevention of UTIs."

Cranberries and cranberry juice is known to prevent Urinary tract infections, otherwise known as UTI's for decades now, but now many studies reveal that there has been no significant prevention of UTI's by consuming cranberry juice.

In 2008, it was shown cranberries offered a tiny benefit in the prevention of UTI's in women. According to one old theory, cranberries contains certain sugars and flavanol compounds which helped in the prevention from the bacteria sticking to the cells which lines the walls of the urinary tract. But it wasn't clear how the cranberries caused the prevention.

A large study was conducted involving 4,473 people, who also included the 14 added since the 2008 update. The study was split in two: The treatment group and control group.

The participants in the treatment group were given cranberry juice, tablets or capsules, while placebo cranberry products, water, methenamine hippurate, antibiotics, lactobacillus or nothing was given to the control group.

Few studies showed small benefits for women suffering from UTI's. But the research was concluded with the shared result that cranberry juice has no support in preventing UTI's.

"Now that we've updated our review with more studies, the results suggest that cranberry juice is even less effective at preventing UTIs than was shown in the last update," said lead researcher Ruth Jepson of the University of Stirling in Stirling, UK.

"We can't see a particular need for more studies of the effect of cranberry juice, as the majority of existing studies indicate that the benefit is small at best, and the studies have high drop-out rates," Jepson said. "More studies of other cranberry products such as tablets and capsules may be justified, but only for women with recurrent UTIs, and only if these products contain the recommended amount of active ingredient."