Cranberry juice does not help UTIs, study says; world rocked

All women know to start swigging the cranberry juice at the first sign of a urinary tract infection. And all women would be wrong.

Cranberry capsules did not prevent or treat UTIs in older women living in nursing homes any more than a placebo did, according to a JAMA study published Thursday.

One in five women will have a UTI at some point, and 80% of them will have a recurring infection. It’s especially prevalent in nursing homes, and the JAMA report notes that cranberry capsules are often given to older women, even though the pills are “understudied.”

The homeopathic therapy has been bearing fruit for so long because cranberries do contain proanthocyanidins (PACs), an active ingredient that can stop bacteria from binding to the walls of the bladder and urinary tract. So people have been gulping the tart juice or swallowing supplements to ease symptoms, which can include painful urination and the frequent urge to pee.

But most of the juice your supermarket stocks just doesn’t have enough of those PACs to stick to your urinary tract wall to work any magic. And clinical studies on the effectiveness of cranberry extracts have been conflicting. A 2012 analysis of 24 studies on cranberries and UTIs found the research suggested “cranberry juice is less effective than previously indicated.”

So researchers from the Yale School of Medicine randomly assigned 185 nursing home residents whose average age was 86 to take two oral cranberry capsules daily, which either contained PACs or a placebo. And over the course of a year, they found no significant difference between the presence of bacteria in the urine of the treatment group versus the control group. There were also no significant differences in the number of symptomatic UTIs, antibiotics prescribed for suspected UTIs, death rates or hospitalizations between the two groups.

In short, the cranberry capsules didn’t make a difference.

“This trial did not show a benefit of cranberry capsules in terms of lower presence of bacteriuria plus pyuria [presence of bacteria and white blood cells in the urine, a telltale sign of a UTI] among older women living in nursing homes,” the study authors concluded.

Dr. Elizabeth Kavaler, urology specialist, Lenox Hill Hospital, agreed that UTI suffers shouldn’t get bogged down in the old cranberry juice myth. “The best defense against UTIs is maintaining a healthy lifestyle of good eating habits, plenty of sleep, and exercise,” she said. “Beyond that, if you get a urinary tract infection, antibiotics are the most effective way of treating it.”