NOT ABOUT MS BUT!!!: "HOW A LITTLE RED WINE PROTECTS AGAINST STROKE DAMAGE
PRESS RELEASE FROM JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICINE

Researchers at Johns Hopkins say they've discovered how red wine protects the brain from damage following a stroke.

Feeding normal mice a single modest dose of a chemical found in red grape skins and seeds two hours before inducing stroke-like damage, the scientists found that the animals suffered less brain damage than similarly damaged mice without benefit of the chemical.

Called resveratrol, the protective compound apparently increases a specific enzyme in the brain -- dubbed HO for heme oxygenase -- that was already known to shield nerve cells from deadly assaults.

In a separate study, the Johns Hopkins scientists treated mouse nerve cells with resveratrol and then bathed the cells in either a known cellular toxin or the toxin plus a drug that blocks HO. Blocking HO eliminated most of resveratrol's protective effects on nerve cells, causing cells to die. Cells treated with resveratrol but not blocked for HO survived 60 percent longer than those not treated.

Although it's hard to determine equivalent doses of resveratrol and Bordeaux, "the beneficial effects associated with having a glass of red wine with dinner could be explained by turning on the HO antioxidant system," says Sylvain Doré, Ph.D., an associate professor in anesthesiology, critical care medicine and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins. "There may be a scientific basis for the French Paradox after all," he says of the observation that frequent consumers of red wine seem more resistant to cardiovascular diseases.