London, Aug 1 (IANS) Scientists have unravelled a mystery about how resveratrol, a component in red wine, is effective against deadly inflammatory diseases.
New research not only explains resveratrol’s punch on inflammation, but also shows how it — or a derivative — can be used to treat potentially deadly inflammatory diseases, such as appendicitis, peritonitis and systemic sepsis.

“Strong acute inflammatory diseases such as sepsis (presence of pus-forming bacteria or their toxins in the blood or tissues) are very difficult to treat and many die every day due to lack of treatment,” said Alirio Melendez, senior lecturer in medicine at the Glasgow Biomedical Research Centre, Scotland.

“Moreover, many survivors of sepsis develop a very low quality of life due to the damage that inflammation causes to several internal organs. The ultimate goal of our study was to identify a potential novel therapy to help in the treatment of strong acute inflammatory diseases.”

In this study, researchers administered an inflammatory agent to two groups of mice. One group was pre-treated with resveratrol and the other group was not.

The mice that were not pretreated with resveratrol experienced a strong inflammatory response, simulating disease in humans, while the group pretreated with resveratrol was protected from the inflammation.

The scientists then examined the tissues of the mice to determine exactly how resveratrol was able to protect the mice from inflammation, said a release of Glasgow Biomedical.

They found that resveratrol used a one-two punch to stop inflammation in the mice by preventing the body from creating two different molecules known to trigger inflammation, sphingosine kinase and phospholipase D.

This finding suggests that resveratrol can be harnessed as a treatment for inflammatory diseases and may also lead to entirely new resveratrol-based drugs that are even more effective.

These findings were published in the August print issue of The FASEB Journal.