Red wine may keep prostate cancer at bay

5 September, 2007:

A glass or two of red wine a day helps reduce the risk of men developing prostate cancer.

Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), the United States, have found that feeding male mice a compound found in red wine, called resveratrol, made them 87% less likely to develop the most deadly type of prostate cancer.

They also found that mice which were fed resveratrol, but still got cancer, developed less serious tumors, and were 48% more likely to have tumor growth halted or slowed when compared to mice not given resveratrol.

The mice that proved to have the highest cancer-protection effect earned it after seven months of consuming resveratrol in a powdered formula mixed with their food.

The findings were published in August 2007 through the online edition of the Journal of Carcinogenesis.

Coral Lamartiniere, of the University of Alabama’s Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology and the lead author of the study, said the findings add to a growing body of evidence that resveratrol consumption through red wine has powerful chemo-prevention properties, in addition to its apparent health benefits for the heart.

The researchers said the amounts used in the mice studies at the University of Alabama were the equivalent of one person consuming one bottle of red wine a day, which is not advisable. Since drinking alcohol in excessive amounts can have harmful health effects, doctors generally recommend moderate red wine consumption, which is an average of two drinks a day for men and one drink a day for women. That could be supplemented by eating grapes, raspberries, blueberries or peanuts, which also contain resveratrol.

A study conducted at the University of Alabama in 2006 and published in the Journal of Carcinogenesis had showed that the benefits of resveratrol were not just for the males. Female mice which were given resveratrol showed a significantly reduced risk of developing breast cancer.

The research team led by Coral Lamartiniere is now trying to find how much resveratrol humans would need to consume to benefit from its cancer-prevention qualities.