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