Red wine may be harmful for people with multiple sclerosis, researchers warned yesterday.
A new study casts doubts on a chemical in the wine, resveratrol, normally thought to have health-giving properties.
Dr Ikuo Tsunoda and colleagues at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, USA, investigated the naturally occurring polyphenol compound made in the skin of red grapes called resveratrol. Resveratrol is available in supplement form as it is thought to be anti-inflammatory and have antioxidant properties. Studies of its effects have had mixed results.
The team tested resveratrol on mice with a similar condition to multiple sclerosis (MS). The animals were fed either a normal diet or a diet containing resveratrol for either two months, or only during the early or the late phases of their condition.
All groups of mice developed symptoms, which were at their worst by three weeks. After five weeks, the normal diet mice began to recover, but all three groups fed resveratrol showed severe and lasting symptoms with no remission.
Resveratrol did not show anti-inflammatory effects or anti-viral properties, neither did it protect the brain against viruses. Full details were reported yesterday (1 October) in the American Journal of Pathology.
Dr Tsunoda says: "Resveratrol may have detrimental effects in some disease conditions and should be discouraged for supplemental use by MS patients pending further research."
However, he points out that resveratrol has previously been shown to have anti-viral effects on some viruses related to MS, such as herpes simplex virus and Epstein-Barr virus. Dr Tsunoda concludes: "Our findings illustrate that caution should be exercised for potential therapeutic application of resveratrol in human inflammatory demyelination diseases."
Sato, F. et al. Resveratrol Exacerbates Both Autoimmune and Viral Models for Multiple Sclerosis. American Journal of Pathology November 2013; doi: 1016/j.ajpath.2013.07.006
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