A new study in the FASEB journal suggests that some polyphenols found in red wine or red grapes may help patients with Alzheimer's disease, which doctorssay has no cure.
Giulio Pasinetti from Department of Neurology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, USA and colleagues conducted the study and found a brain-targeted polyphenol metabolite called quercetin-3-O-glucuronide significantly reduced the formation of β-amyloid (Aβ) peptides in cell cultures from mouses with a disease similar to human Alzheimer's disease.
The researchers reported that epidemiological and preclinical studies show evidence suggesting that intake of polyphenols from red wines may lower the risk for developing Alzheimer's disease (AD) dementia.
The current study was intended to understand why red wine polyphenols may provide such a benefit.
For the study, Pasinetti et al. assessed accumulations of metabolites of red wine polyphenols in the rat brain following oral administration of a Cabernet Sauvignon red wine and then tested brain-targeted metabolites for potentially beneficial disease-modifying activities for Alzheimer's disease.
In addition to reducing the formation of β-amyloid (Aβ) peptides, which are the key components that scientists believe cause Alzheimer's, quercetin-3-O-glucuronide was also found capable of interfering with the interaction of Aβ1–40 and Aβ1–42, which is necessary for the formation of neurotoxic oligomeric Aβ species.
Also, quercetin-3-O-glucuronide treatment as compared to vehicle-control treatment was found to significantly improve Alzheimer's disease-type deficits in "hippocampal formation basal synaptic transmission and long-term potentiation, possibly through mechanisms involving the activation of the c- Jun N-terminal kinases and the mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling pathways."
The researchers concluded "Brain-targeted quercetin-3-O-glucuronide may simultaneously modulate multiple independent AD disease-modifying mechanisms and, as such, may contribute to the benefits of dietary supplementation with red wines as an effective intervention for AD (Alzheimer's disease)."
