|
E-mail this page to a friend!
Senior Citizen Health & Medicine
Red Wine Element Reverses Pathways of Obesity
That Cause Age-Related Diseases
Resveratrol
previously found to extend lifespan of other organisms may help against
heart disease, diabetes
 November 2, 2006 The headlines on a new study
focused on the discovery that resveratrol, found in red wine, when given
to obese mice significantly increased their lifespan. Too often obesity
is associated with physical appearance, but this test did not make the
thinner - it helped them live longer. These
researchers emphasize that the drug reversed gene expression
patterns associated with diabetes, heart disease and other diseases
related to obesity. Resveratrol has previously been shown to extend the
life of several other organisms.
| |
Related Stories |
|
| |
Red Wine but Not White Reduces Risk of Colon Cancer
Study says it is the resveratrol in red wine
that provides protection
 October 23, 2006- Drinking more than three glasses
of red wine a week reduced the risk for colon cancer, according to
research presented at the 71st Annual Scientific Meeting of the American
College of Gastroenterology in Las Vegas.
Read
more...
Red Wine Reduces Alzheimers Disease-Causing
Peptides
Its the resveratrol from grapes that also protect
our hearts, prevent cancer
Nov.
3, 2005 The good news for red wine continues to mount. A new study
says resveratrol, a compound found in grapes and red wine, lowers the
levels of the amyloid-beta peptides, which cause the tell-telltale
senile plaques of Alzheimers disease. A study earlier this year found
it is the polyphenols, like resveratrol, that also lower the risk of
heart problems when we drink two to three glasses of red wine a day.
Polyphenols have also been identified in helping prevent cancer.
Read more...
Drinking Red Wine Definitely Good for the Heart but
It May Be Polyphenols
Polyphenols
already identified in benefits of red wine to prevent cancer
March 18, 2005 Drinking two to three glasses of
red wine daily is good for the heart, says a Yale School of Medicine
researcher. But he says it may be due to polyphenols in the wine, rather
than the alcohol. Polyphenols in red wine have also been identified for
helping prevent cancer.
Read more...
Can Women Heal Their Heart with Wine and Chocolate?
Feb. 1, 2006 - If women would drink a glass of red
wine a day and eat an ounce of dark chocolate, they could help reduce
their risk of heart disease by 54 percent, says a new book.
Read more...
Red Wine Drinkers Decrease Risk of Cataracts
Aug. 15, 2005 - Red wine consumption decreases the
risk of cataract but beer does not seem to work, say researchers who
studied older people in Iceland.
Read
more...
Red Wine Fights Periodontal Disease that Hits Most
Older People
March 10, 2006 The latest medical miracle for red
wine is its assist in preventing and treating inflammatory periodontal
disease, which attacks about 65 percent of Americans over age 50.
Read more...
Read more
on
Health & Medicine |
|
This research, led by investigators at Harvard
Medical School and the National Institute on Aging, is the first time
that the small molecule resveratrol has been shown to offer survival
benefits in a mammal. The study is reported in the November 1 advanced
online edition of Nature.
"Mice are much closer evolutionarily to humans than
any previous model organism treated by this molecule, which offers hope
that similar impacts might be seen in humans without negative
side-effects," says co-senior author David Sinclair, HMS associate
professor of pathology, and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Labs for
the Biological Mechanisms of Aging.
"After six months, resveratrol essentially
prevented most of the negative effects of the high calorie diet in
mice," said Rafael de Cabo, Ph.D., the study's other co-senior
investigator from the National Institute on Aging's Laboratory of
Experimental Gerontology, Aging, Metabolism, and Nutrition Unit.
"There is a lot of work ahead that will help us
better understand resveratrol's roles and the best applications for it."
Resveratrol is found in red wines and produced by a
variety of plants when put under stress. It was first discovered to have
an anti-aging properties by Sinclair, other HMS researchers, and their
colleagues in 2003 and reported in Nature. The 2003 study showed that
yeast treated with resveratrol lived 60 percent longer.
(Editor's note: to learn more
about resveratrol, read report below this news story by the National
Cancer Institute.)
Since 2003, resveratrol has been shown to extend
the lifespan of worms and flies by nearly 30 percent and fish by almost
60 percent. It has also been shown to protect against Huntington's
disease in two different animal models (worms and mice).
"The 'healthspan' benefits we saw in the obese mice
treated with resveratrol, such as increased insulin sensitivity,
decreased glucose levels, healthier heart and liver tissues, are
positive clinical indicators and may mean we can stave off in humans
age-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer,
but only time and more research will tell," says Sinclair, who is also a
co-founder of Sirtris, a company with an author on this paper and which
is currently in a phase 1b trial in humans with diabetes using an
enhanced, proprietary formulation of resveratrol. [Editor's Note:
Harvard has license and equity interests with Sirtris, which is not a
public company.]
Investigators identified resveratrol while looking
for compounds that activate Sir2, an enzyme linked to lifespan extension
in yeast and other lower organisms. For the last 70 years, scientists
have been able to increase the lifespan of a variety of species by
reducing their normal food consumption by 30 to 40 percent - a diet
known as calorie restriction.
Through this research, scientists identified Sir2
as a key contributor to life extension. Without Sir2, for example, fruit
flies see none of the benefits from either calorie restriction or
treatment by resveratrol.
The mammalian version of the Sir2 gene is SIRT1,
which has the same enzymatic activity as Sir2, but modifies a wider
variety of molecules throughout cells. Indicators in this study show
that resveratrol might also be activating SIRT1 in mice, as well as
other known longevity pathways.
How the Study Was Done
This study examined three groups of mice, one on a
standard diet (SD), and another on a high calorie diet (HC) with 60
percent of calories coming from fat, and a third group of mice on the
same high calorie diet but also treated with resveratrol (HCR). At
middle age, or roughly 52 weeks of life, the researchers put the mice on
the different diets.
Survival Benefit
At 60 weeks of age, the survival rates of HC and
HCR fed mice groups began to diverge and remained separated by a three
to four month span. At 114 weeks of age, 58 percent of the HC fed mice
had died, compared to 42 percent of the HCR and SD groups.
Presently, the team has found resveratrol to reduce
the risk of death from the HC diet by 31 percent, to a point where it is
not significantly increased over the SD group. [Note: Given that mice
are still living, final calculations can't be made.]
"The median lifespan increase we are seeing is
about 15 percent at this point," says Sinclair. "We won't have final
lifespan numbers until all of the mice pass away, and this particular
strain of mouse generally lives for two-and-a-half-years. So we are
around five months from having final numbers, but there is no question
that we are seeing increased longevity."
The team also found that the HCR fed mice had a
much higher quality of life, outperforming the HC fed mice on motor
skill tests. "The mice on resveratrol have not been just living longer,"
says Sinclair. "They are also living more active, better lives. Their
motor skills actually show improvement as they grow older."
Reversing Genetic Pathways Triggered by High
Calorie Diet
The research team also wanted to see if resveratrol
could reverse the changes in gene expression patterns triggered by high
calorie diets. Using liver tissue of five mice at 18 months of age from
each group, the team performed a whole-genome microarray and identified
which genes were turned on or off.
The researchers then used a database generated by
the Broad Institute that groups individual genes into common functional
pathways to see where there were major differences.
"We made a striking observation," says Sinclair.
"Resveratrol opposed the effects of high caloric intake in 144 out of
153 significantly altered pathways. In terms of gene expression and
pathway comparison, the resveratrol fed group was more similar to the
standard diet fed group than the high calorie group."
Improved Health Biomarkers: Glucose and Insulin
In humans, high calorie diets can increase glucose
and insulin levels leading to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and
non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. In the HC fed mice, researchers found
biomarkers that might predict diabetes, including increased levels of
insulin, glucose and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1).
Conversely, the HCR fed group had significantly
lower levels of these markers, paralleling the SD group. For example, a
standard diabetes glucose test on the HCR fed group found considerably
higher insulin sensitivity, meaning the HCR group had a lower
disposition toward diabetes than the HC fed group. Lower insulin levels
also predict increased lifespan in mice.
Organ Protection: Heart and Liver
Three pathologists examined heart tissue from the
SD, HC, and HCR mice, and while not knowing which organ belonged to
which mouse group, they looked for subtle changes in the abundance of
fatty lesions, degeneration and inflammation. On a relative scale of
0-4, the assessment produced mean scores of 1.6 for the SD group, 3.2
for the HC group, and 1.2 for the HCR group.
The researchers also found that the livers of mice
at 18 months of age on the HC diet were greatly increased in size and
weight. Liver tissue studies of these mice showed a loss of cellular
integrity, and a build-up of lipids, which is common to high fat diets.
In contrast, the HCR group had normal, healthy livers.
Links to Calorie Restriction Lifespan Model
The researchers also looked for metabolic ties to
resveratrol's impact: pathway changes that mimicked those caused by
calorie restriction. They examined AMP-activated kinase (AMPK), a
metabolic regulator that promotes insulin sensitivity and fatty acid
oxidation.
It's been shown in previous work that the lifespan
of worms has been extended by the addition of copies the AMPK gene, and
chronic activation of AMPK is seen on calorie-restricted diets. The
researchers examined the livers of the HCR fed group and found a strong
tendency for AMPK activation, as well as two downstream indicators of
its activity.
Calorie restriction and exercise have also been
previously shown to increase the number of mitochondria in the liver.
Mitochondria generate energy in cells. Through electron microscopy,
investigators showed that the livers of the HCR fed mice had
considerably more mitochondria than the HC group, and were not
significantly different from those of the SD group.
Links to SIRT1
The team also asked if SIRT1 was activated by
resveratrol in mice, as Sir2 is in lower organisms. To determine this,
they looked at the amount of a specific chemical modification (acetylation)
on the molecule PGC-1alpha. Removal of the "acetyl" chemical groups on
PGC-1alpha activates this protein so that it can turn on certain genes
that generate mitochondria and turn muscle into the type suited for
endurance. The only enzyme known to remove the acetyl chemical groups on
PGC-1alpha is SIRT1, and therefore the activity of PGC-1alpha is one of
the most reliable and specific markers of SIRT1 activity in mammals.
The research team found that levels of PGC-1alpha
were three-fold lower in the HCR fed mice than in the HC mice,
consistent with what would be expected when SIRT1 was being activated by
resveratrol.
"This work demonstrates that there may be
tremendous medical benefits to unlocking the secrets behind the genes
that control our longevity," says Sinclair, "No doubt many more remain
to be discovered in coming years."
This study was supported by Paul F. Glenn and the
Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, the U.S. National Institutes of
Health and the National Institute of Aging, the Ellison Medical Research
Foundation, the American Heart Foundation, and the American Diabetes
Association.
For more information on diabetes, visit the Harvard
Medical School Consumer Information page at:
http://hms.harvard.edu/public/disease/diabetes/diabetes.html
.
About Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School (http://hms.harvard.edu/)
has more than 10,000 faculty working in 10 academic departments housed
on the School's Boston quadrangle or in one of 48 academic departments
at 18 Harvard teaching hospitals and research institutes. Those Harvard
hospitals and research institutions include Beth Israel Deaconess
Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Cambridge Health Alliance,
The CBR Institute for Biomedical Research, Children's Hospital Boston,
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Forsyth Institute, Harvard Pilgrim Health
Care, Joslin Diabetes Center, Judge Baker Children's Center,
Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Massachusetts General Hospital,
Massachusetts Mental Health Center, McLean Hospital, Mount Auburn
Hospital, Schepens Eye Research Institute, Spaulding Rehabilitation
Hospital, and the VA Boston Healthcare System.
Red Wine and Cancer Prevention: Questions and
Answers
By National Cancer Institute
Red wine is a rich source of biologically active
phytochemicals, chemicals found in plants. Particular compounds called
polyphenols found in red wine-such as catechins and resveratrol-are
thought to have anti oxidant or anti cancer properties.
1. What are polyphenols and how do they prevent
cancer?
Polyphenols are antioxidant compounds found in the
skin and seeds of grapes. When wine is made from these grapes, the
alcohol produced by the fermentation process dissolves the polyphenols
contained in the skin and seeds. Red wine contains more polyphenols than
white wine because the making of white wine requires the removal of the
skins after the grapes are crushed. The phenols in red wine include
catechin, gallic acid and epicatechin.
Polyphenols have been found to have antioxidant
properties. Antioxidants are substances that protect cells from
oxidative damage caused by molecules called free radicals. These
chemicals can damage important parts of cells, including proteins,
membranes and DNA. Cellular damage caused by free radicals has been
implicated in the development of cancer. Research on the antioxidants
found in red wine has shown that they may help inhibit the development
of certain cancers.
2. What is resveratrol and how does it prevent
cancer?
Resveratrol is a type of polyphenol called a
phytoalexin, a class of compounds produced as part of a plant's defense
system against disease. It is produced in the plant in response to an
invading fungus, stress, injury, infection or ultraviolet irradiation.
Red wine contains high levels of resveratrol, as do grapes, raspberries,
peanuts and other plants.
Resveratrol has been shown to reduce tumor
incidence in animals by affecting one or more stages of cancer
development. It has been shown to inhibit growth of many types of cancer
cells in culture. Evidence also exists that it can reduce inflammation.
It also reduces activation of NF kappa B, a protein produced by the
body's immune system when it is under attack. This protein affects
cancer cell growth and metastasis. Resveratrol is also an antioxidant.
3. What have red wine studies found?
The cell and animal studies of red wine have
examined effects in several cancers including leukemia, skin, breast and
prostate cancers. Scientists are studying resveratrol to learn more
about its cancer preventive activities. Recent evidence from animal
studies suggests this anti-inflammatory compound may be an effective
chemopreventive agent in three stages of the cancer process: initiation,
promotion and progression.
However, studies of the association between red
wine consumption and cancer in humans are in their initial stages.
Although consumption of large amounts of alcoholic beverages may
increase the risk of some cancers, there is growing evidence that the
health benefits of red wine are related to its nonalcoholic components.
Click to More Senior News on the
Front Page
Copyright: SeniorJournal.com |
