Resveratrol, the miracle molecule from red wine, has
rocketed from relative obscurity to celebrity status in the supplement market.
Its multiple anti-aging properties are given credit for this, and I used
resveratrol research in my book “Age Gets Better with Wine” to explain why
moderate regular consumption of red wine is a healthy thing. Supplement
marketers now proclaim that resveratrol pills have “all the benefits of wine
without the alcohol” and tout their own special formulas. Yet there remains a
lack of large well-controlled clinical studies to back up these claims.
A relatively new field of medical science called
translational medicine helps explain the problem. Often called “bench to
bedside” research, translational medicine seeks to bridge the gap between
laboratory studies and validated clinical treatments. The challenge of
translational medicine is enormous, given that more than 90% of treatments (say
for example a drug or supplement) fail in human trials after successful runs in
animal studies. It’s an astonishing statistic, but this
percentage has actually been increasing despite improvements in methodology. Dr.
Richard Klausner, former Director of the National Cancer Institute, summed up
the problem: “We have cured cancer in mice for decades—and it simply didn’t
work in humans.”
So what does this mean for resveratrol? Despite the
thousands of scholarly publications on resveratrol, it is still not clear. If
you are a fruit fly, then resveratrol will activate your anti-aging sirtuin
genes and you will live longer (and apparently have a more vigorous sex life.)
If you are a mouse on a high fat diet, resveratrol is what you want in order to
set your metabolism in order. But translating these findings to humans is deceptively
difficult. A recent article highlighted some of the problems: Natural compounds
such as resveratrol afford no intellectual property that could be leveraged to
fund the large clinical trials needed to determine their effectiveness;
nutraceutical companies complicate the problem further by developing their own
proprietary blends with multiple ingredients; and resveratrol has multiple
therapeutic “targets” each with its own dose-response curve, tissue affinity,
and metabolism.
Resveratrol research may still pan out however, and some
therapeutic applications are well validated, such as in skin care. Evidence is
certainly adequate to continue with clinical research on resveratrol on a wide
range of conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, and
cardiovascular disease. But a glass of red wine with dinner is still a good
thing and likely to remain so.
Comments
Post a Comment