Hangover cure goes pear shaped

FORGET Bloody Marys and raw eggs — the ideal cure for a hangover is a prickly pear, according to scientists.

An extract from the skin of the plant was found in tests to ease the symptoms of a night of over-indulgence.

Researchers took 55 volunteers aged between 21 and 35 and gave half the herbal remedy five hours before drinking. The other half were given a placebo.

An hour later the test subjects were given a fast food meal, and the drinking began.

For four hours each of the volunteers was given vodka, gin, rum, bourbon, scotch or tequila.

Each consumed up to 1.75 grams of alcohol per kilogram of body weight, shown in other tests to prompt hangovers.

The next day the volunteers returned to the laboratory and had blood and urine samples taken and were given a "hangover score" on a scale of one to six, six being worst.

Two weeks later the drinking binge and tests were repeated, but this time the original placebo volunteers were given the prickly pear extract.

Dr Jeff Wiese, who led the study at Tulane University in New Orleans, found that three of nine common symptoms of hangover nausea, dry mouth and loss of appetite were significantly reduced in those who had taken the extract. They scored an average of 2.75, compared with 3.10 for the placebo volunteers.

"We found hangover-symptom severity to be moderately reduced by an extract of the prickly pear plant," said Dr Wiese, whose study was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The scientists believe that the prickly pear helps the body clean itself of proteins which cause inflammation in blood vessels.