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    Friday, July 31, 2009

    Resveratrol 101: Health Secrets of Wine and Grapes Discovered

    Researchers have uncovered the secret of why red wine, grapes and some other fruits are beneficial for health. Scientists from Scotland and Singapore have discovered that resveratrol in red wine (and red grapes) has potent anti-inflammatory properties that could be tapped for treating life threatening inflammation – the kind associated with massive systemic infection (sepsis), appendicitis, and peritonitis (abdominal inflammation).

    Sepsis and peritonitis can be deadly. Antibiotic resistance increases the risk of dying from a virulent bacteria or virus. Inflammation releases cytokines that harm tissues in the body, sometimes irreversibly. The new study shows that resveratrol compounds might be used to develop drugs that prevent inflammation and risk of death from life threatening illnesses.

    Alirio Melendez, senior lecturer on the faculty of medicine at Glasgow Biomedical Research Centre in Scotland participated in the research. Melendez explains, "Strong acute inflammatory diseases such as sepsis are very difficult to treat and many die every day due to lack of treatment. Moreover, many survivors of sepsis develop a very low quality of life due to the damage that inflammation causes to several internal organs. The ultimate goal of our study was to identify a potential novel therapy to help in the treatment of strong acute inflammatory diseases."

    The secret to the health benefits of resveratrol comes from the compound’s ability to prevent the formation of two different molecules that trigger inflammation - sphingosine kinase and phospholipase D, discovered in mouse studies.

    The scientists compared inflammatory response in two groups of mice – one group was pretreated with resveratrol. The mice not given resveratrol displayed strong inflammatory response compared to the mice give the natural compound.

    Resveratrol is found in nature, and is now shown to have potential for treating inflammation associated with serious illness. Plants produce resveratrol as a defense against bacteria. Red wines produce resveratrol during fermentation. Red grape juice, some white wines, blueberries, mulberry fruit, and peanuts also contain resveratrol in varying quantities. Red grapes contain the highest levels of resveratrol. Some manufacturers of supplements get the compound from Japanese knotweed.

    The study showing the potential of resveratrol for treating life threatening illness is published in the FASEB journal. According to Editor-in-Chief, Gerald Weissmann, MD, "The therapeutic potential of red wine has been bottled up for thousands of years and now that scientists have uncorked its secrets, they find that studies of how resveratrol works can lead to new treatments for life-threatening inflammation."

    Source: www.Examiner.com

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