Botulism is a form of paralysis caused by a neurotoxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum. It is well known that natural honey contains Clostridium botulinum spores; controversy arises when a honey-related product is being used for wound care, where the possibility occurs of applying these spores to an open wound. To our knowledge, no reported cases of medical-grade honey have been associated with wound botulism. Given this fact, do we feel secure regarding the safety of this product, and will it be enough to alleviate our concern? We present a case of an infant with an infected umbilical stump, which required a surgical wound debridement. This infant developed a sudden progressive flaccid paralysis a few days after the application of topical medical grade honey for wound care. Even though suspicion of wound botulism is high, confirmation of the diagnosis, detection of neurotoxin, and isolating the organism remains a challenge.
The aim of this study was to identify the major allergens of wildflower honey in local patients with atopic disease. SDS-PAGE revealed ten protein bands of 25 to 110 kDa, with a heavy cluster in region of 40-75 kDa. Immunoblotting demonstrated seven IgE-binding bands of 39 to 110 kDa. The 60 kDa protein had the highest frequency of IgE-binding (100%) followed by 54 kDa protein (95%), thus identified as the major allergens of wildflowerhoney. Our findings indicate that the allergen extract used for diagnosis of honey allergy contains both the 54 kDa and 60 kDa proteins.