Green tea consumption has been found to increase the efficacy of antibiotics by up to three times.

"In every single case green tea enhanced the bacteria-killing activity of the antibiotics. For example the killing effect of chloramphenicol was 99.99% better when taken with green tea than when taken on its own in some circumstances."

Green tea also made 20% of drug-resistant bacteria susceptible to one of the cephalosporin antibiotics. These are important antibiotics that new drug resistant strains of bacteria have evolved to resist.

These data were presented during the Society for General Microbiology's 162nd meeting recently held at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.