In recent months, we’ve heard a lot about the red wine ingredient resveratrol. It’s been mentioned as a treatment for everything from heart disease to osteoarthritis to cancer. In fact, in January 2009, the CBS TV News program 60 Minutes interviewed researchers who proclaimed a modern-day fountain of youth “ resveratrol.
The mythical fountain of youth sought by Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León in the 1500s was supposed to confer eternal youth on anyone who drank from it. In correspondent Morley Safer’s 60 Minutes interview with Dr. Christoph Westphal (one of the scientists who is studying the red wine ingredient resveratrol), Safer inquired whether Westphal thought that resveratrol might be some kind of a rejuvenation drug that would turn a 70-year-old into a 35-year-old. If that were the case, we could indeed infer the parallel: Fountain of Youth=Resveratrol.
However, Westphal was careful to draw the line. Although his partner in Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, Dr. David Sinclair, has shown that resveratrol controls aging in yeasts, worms, fruit flies, fish, and “ most recently and spectacularly “ in mice, we still don’t know if that can be extended to humans. The Linus Pauling Institute reminds us that even though mice and humans share a homologous enzyme (one having the same appearance, structure, or evolutionary origin), that doesn’t necessarily mean that the effect of resveratrol in mice would be duplicated in humans (Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University). To discover whether these findings also apply to humans, in vitro (test tube) testing will not be sufficient. Clinical trials, in vivo (in living people), will be required. Such trials would need to be many years in length.
Dr. Westphal answered Morley Safer’s question by saying, I think we can slow down these genes that control the aging process. Does that mean that science is getting closer to developing a pill that can keep us young forever?
Not exactly.
What it does mean is that Sirtris and a few other biotech companies are putting their time and money into developing new drugs based on resveratrol. It appears that there is a human longevity gene, homologous to the gene in mice. Resveratrol in mice can activate this gene; and it may be able to activate it in humans as well, much as caloric restriction turns on the same survival switch.
Evidence for the caloric-restriction theory of longevity comes from a recently-released 20-year study of rhesus monkeys at the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Richard Weindruch, lead researcher for the study, reported that the monkeys whose caloric intake had been severely restricted for 20 years were healthier than the control monkeys, who had been fed a normal diet for 20 years. Additionally, the calorie-restricted monkeys suffered less diabetes, cancer, and heart disease, apparently confirming that caloric restriction holds off the degenerative diseases of aging in primates. Dr. Sinclair cited the primate study along with Sirtris’s work on the longevity gene, saying that both caloric restriction and resveratrol have the ability to delay, if not entirely prevent, these diseases of aging. Even without an increase in longevity, he said, it would be a huge advance if we could develop a single drug that postponed many degenerative diseases.
So perhaps, if not precisely the Fountain of Youth, resveratrol is capable of preventing or postponing the degenerative diseases that differentiate youth from age. Aging might not be considered a problem, if we could pass through the Golden Years with the energy and health of youth! We’ll be watching as new studies are announced, to see how this red wine ingredient resveratrol performs in other tests.