Compound in Red Wine May Fight Alzheimer's

Nov. 4, 2005 -- New research shows that a compound in red wine and grapes may counter a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease.

But don't count on wine to ward off Alzheimer's.

"Going now to the public and telling them, 'You should drink wine and you won't have Alzheimer's disease' is totally wrong," researcher Philippe Marambaud, PhD, tells WebMD.

"We don't know yet and we have to be very careful," he continues. "What we have seen is just, maybe, the tip of the iceberg."

Still, he says the findings are "strongly supportive [of] the fact that there is something in red wine that may be protective" and could lead to the development of new Alzheimer's drugs.

Marambaud is a senior research scientist at New York's Litwin-Zucker Research Center for the Study of Alzheimer's Disease and Memory Disorders. He's also an assistant professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

His study appears in The Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Key Compound

The compound that attracted the attention of Marambaud's team is resveratrol. It's found in red wine, grapes (especially black ones), peanuts, and some berries.

Resveratrol is an antioxidant, a group of plant-based chemicals being widely studied for their health benefits.

Marambaud's interest was sparked by observational studies (done by other experts) showing that Alzheimer's is rarer in populations that consume moderate amounts of red wine.

Lab Tests

In Marambaud's lab tests, resveratrol hampered beta-amyloid protein. That protein is a key ingredient in plaque found in the brains of people who die with Alzheimer's disease.

Resveratrol didn't stop the protein's production. Instead, it encouraged beta-amyloid's breakdown.

That's a "very attractive mechanism for therapy" against Alzheimer's, says Marambaud.

He and his colleagues also tested a handful of other antioxidants against beta-amyloid. Only resveratrol stood out.

Why Not Just Eat and Drink It?

It would probably be impractical, Marambaud says, to try to get the levels of resveratol used in his study from food or drink.

Natural resveratrol is unstable, Marambaud says. That makes it hard to get protection from eating grapes or drinking wine.

Plus, resveratrol doesn't have the compound market cornered. It's got lots of chemical company in a glass of wine or a bunch of grapes.

It's difficult to know if those compounds team up when they're together -- working differently than in isolation -- and how that might affect Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, Marambaud says.

"Maybe if you drink wine for 20 years, you may have a beneficial effect," Marambaud speculates. "But people want to hear something in the short term."

Next Steps

Marambaud and colleagues want to tweak resveratrol to make it a drug.

"We're going to take this natural compound as a scaffold and modify [it] chemically to make it more active and ... more stable," Marambaud says.