TEETOTALLERS and drinkers of white wine needn't miss out on the protection
against heart disease enjoyed by red wine drinkers. According to research
unveiled this week, an alcohol-free powdered extract of red wine is equally
beneficial. Red wine is thought to protect against heart attacks by preventing
arteries from furring up with deposits of low- density lipoprotein (LDL),
a form of cholesterol. Polyphenols, which are abundant in red wine, are
believed to block the oxidation of LDLS, and so stop them accumulating on
arterial walls. Norman Williams, Shailja Nigdikar and Alan Howard of Papworth
Hospital 4 near Cambridge wanted to see if poly- phenols would work without
their usual alcoholic accompaniment. They gave regular daily amounts of
red wine, white wine or capsules of the extracted polyphenols to 20 healthy
men S aged between 35 and 65. The men tried s each regime for two weeks,
"drying out" for a fortnight before switching to the next supplement.
Each person also spent c a fortnight taking the red wine extract mixed with
white wine. "The results show that the benefits c of the powder were
very similar to r those for red wine," says Williams. They t gauged
the benefits by monitoring blood levels of substances that show whether
oxidation of LDLs is rising or failing. Williams and his colleagues, who
presented their findings this week in London at a conference of the Nutrition
Society, say that much larger, longer studies are needed to see whether
the oxidation measurements translate into fewer heart attacks. But Williams
is confident that the results could be good news for teetotallers. "I
think personally that if you like a drop of claret, carry on, but a lot
of people don't like red wine, so the [extract] could provide them with
another way of getting the benefits," he says. Andy Coghlan 22 February1997
New Scientist