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ITHACA, NY. Most of my research involves long hours on the computer or in the medical library. So it's a pleasure to literally do some fieldwork here in the Finger Lakes. I'm making my annual tour of wine country, visiting some of New York State's most innovative wineries. My special interest, aside from sampling some amazing wines, is in assessing the progress in organic wine cultivation, especially those containing a natural compound called resveratrol. Some of the Finger Lakes wines have been found, in a Cornell University study, to have the highest resveratrol content in the world.
Pinot Noir Grapes
Source: Wikimedia Commons |  |
Resveratrol is a natural compound found in the skin of grapes and in various red wines. It may be that its presence, even in minute quantities, can help explain the "French paradox." This refers to the fact that the French people have a diet much higher in saturated fats than most Americans (four times as much butter, for instance) but also less heart disease. Some scientists attribute this paradox to the resveratrol that the French get from drinking wine on a daily basis.
There is also some animal experimentation from 2008 showing that mice fed resveratrol live longer than mice that are deprived of this chemical (Pearson 2008). It may be that resveratrol triggers production of sirtuins, a class of proteins that regulate metabolism. The trouble with all these experiments is that they use a level of resveratrol that is impossible to attain in humans: you'd have to drink between 35 to 100 bottles of red wine a day. This would be a bit much even for the most determined tippler.
But a lot of scientists are betting that they can design look-alike drugs that can be made on the model of resveratrol and that can have a positive impact on health and longevity. In one of the most astonishing business stories of last year, Sirtris, a startup company that develops drugs with effects similar to resveratrol, was sold to GlaxoSmithKline for $720 million. Sirtris is working on other drugs that can activate sirtuins.
Teetotalers needn't write in (as they did the last time I wrote in praise of wine) to remind me of all of alcohol's many downsides. I get it. If you don't drink, you shouldn't start just just in order to boost your consumption of resveratrol. And, yes, it's also true that red or purple grape juice also contains resveratrol (about half as much as wine). But if you already do take a glass of wine now and then, and don't intend to stop, your best bet is to cultivate a taste for Pinot Noir. Because of the complicated relationships between these grapes, the fungi that attack them, and the cool lakeside temperatures in which they flourish, Pinots are particularly rich in resveratrol. I will put in a plug for one of my favorites, the Fleur de Pinot Noir of Konstantin Frank, cultivated in a biodynamic manner high above Keuka Lake, about an hour from where I write these words.
I can't leave the subject of wine and cancer without point to the intriguing findings of Elizabeth T. Eng and colleagues at City of Hope hospital, Los Angeles. A few years ago they found that a Pinot Noir extract was an effective inhibitor of aromatase (Eng 2002). Aromatase, as many patients know, is an enzyme that converts the hormone androgen to estrogen. It is expressed at a higher level in breast cancer tissue than in surrounding non-cancerous tissue. That is why many estrogen-receptor positive breast cancer patients are given adjuvant doses of synthetic aromatase inhibitors. And although it is still too soon to say, perhaps some day oncologists will no longer prescribe Arimidex (anastrazole), Aromasin (exemestane) or Femara (letrozole), but a glass or two of Pinot Noir with your dinner.
--Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.
Resources:
Eng ET, Williams D, Mandava U, Kirma N, Tekmal RR, Chen S. Anti-aromatase chemicals in red wine. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2002 Jun;963:239-46.
Pearson KJ, Baur JA, Lewis NK, et al. Resveratrol delays age-related deterioration and mimics transcriptional aspects of dietary restriction without extending life span. Cell Metab. 2008 Aug;8(2):157-68. Epub 2008 Jul 3.
Wade, Nicholas. New Hints Seen That Red Wine May Slow Aging. New York Times, June 4, 2008.
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