Bee propolis has reportedly been used for hundreds if not thousands of years in various forms of medicine. But a much more recent study seems to indicate that bee propolis is effective in treating patients with minor burns.
There were a number of controls on the study, but the gist is that only patients with multiple burns of similar size and severity were included. This meant that for each patient, researchers could use bee propolis on one of the wounds while treating the other with silver sulfadiazene. Silver sulfadiazene is normally used as a burn cream in treating patients with second and third degree burns. SSD is kept applied to the wound until the burn has healed so as to minimize the risk of infection.
When compared with silver sulfadiazene, wounds treated with bee propolis cream showed less inflammation and healed more quickly. This led researchers to believe that this particular bee propolis cream did in fact aid the healing process for these types of burns.
You can read more about the study at Comparison of propolis skin cream to silver sulfadiazine: a naturopathic alternative to antibiotics in treatment of minor burns.
