Red Wine & CancerResearchers believe they
have unlocked the mystery of how an antioxidant found in grapes and
red wine fights cancer. A study published in the July edition of the
journal Cancer Research concludes that the compound resveratrol, which
acts like an antibiotic to protect grapes from fungus, may turn off
a protein that guards cancer cells from cancer-fighting therapies such
as chemotherapy.
The research may one day allow the compound itself to be used in cancer
prevention and treatment, said Minnie Holmes-McNary, a nutritional biologist
at the University of North Carolina's medical school in Chapel Hill.
"The benefit is that it certainly provides an open door for potential
therapies," said Holmes-McNary, the study's lead author. That may include
taking a pill similar to a vitamin supplement. The benefits of drinking
a glass of red wine have been touted over the past decade after the
discovery of the "French paradox" - that the French had low rates of
heart disease despite high-cholesterol diets. Studies have shown the
key may be the glass or two of red table wine at dinner. A few years
ago, researchers found that resveratrol kept cells from turning cancerous
and stopped the spread of malignancies. Resveratrol also blocked cell
inflammation, which is linked to arthritis and other diseases.
Resveratrol can be found in dozens of foods, including mulberries and
peanuts. All wines have some resveratrol, but red wine seems to be its
richest source.
Holmes-McNary and co-author Albert Baldwin Jr. at the medical school's
Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center wanted to know how resveratrol
kills cancer cells. The researchers used previous research by Baldwin
and others that determined the protein called NF-kappa B enabled tumor
cells to survive even chemotherapy. When NF-kappa B is blocked in mice
- as observed last year in a study - the cancer cells were eradicated
by the chemotherapy. Holmes-McNary and Baldwin tested how cultured human
and animal tumor cells reacted to the resveratrol, learning that it
effectively turned off the NF-kappa B cancer gene. Untreated tumors
continued to thrive, Holmes-McNary said.
Discovering the mechanisms of resveratrol is important to developing
the compound as a cancer-preventive agent for humans, said John Pezzuto,
a University of Illinois at Chicago researcher who first reported resveratrol's
link to red wine and fighting cancer in 1997.
"It's a good contribution," Pezzuto said of the study. "It seems like
there are multiple mechanisms. In the end, there may be a common thread
to all of them. It's like we're laying down pieces of the puzzle. This
is one of those pieces."
The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and the North
Carolina chapter of the American Heart Association, also found muscadine
wines contain up to seven times more resveratrol than regular wines.
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