HOW A LITTLE RED WINE PROTECTS AGAINST STROKE DAMAGE

Johns Hopkins Medicine PRESS RELEASE:

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

CAMPATH: NEWS MS DRUG WITH GREAT POTENTIAL
Phase III MS study planned

...The companies are also pressing on with plans to start a Phase III study of Campath for the treatment of relapsing/remitting multiple sclerosis, although this strategy has run into difficulties of late. They were forced to halt dosing in a Phase II trial of Campath for MS after a patient died of a serious bleeding disorder.

However, the drug's efficacy was seen to be excellent, cutting the relapse rate in patients by 75% compared to the comparator drug, Serono's blockbuster Rebif (interferon beta-1a).

Furthermore, Campath is given just once a year, while Rebif is administered three times a week, providing another significant treatment advantage.CLICK FOR FULL STORY

Moderate Drinking Lowers Death Risk - MedPage Today:
In a meta-analysis of 34 prospective studies, a few drinks a day -- one to two for women and two to four for men -- led to lengthier lives, found Augusto Di Castelnuovo, Sc.D., of the Catholic University here, and colleagues.

"Our data show that consumption of little amounts of alcohol leads to a reduction of mortality up to 18%," Dr. Di Castelnuovo said. But, he cautioned, "after a certain number of glasses things radically change" and the risk of death rises again.

The finding was based on an analysis of studies involving 1,015,835 persons and 94,533 deaths, Dr. Di Castelnuovo reported in the Dec. 11 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Previous studies have shown an inverse relationship between moderate alcohol consumption and coronary heart disease, Dr. Di Castelnuovo and colleagues said, but this is the first to show a similar effect for all-cause mortality."Moderate drinking has a protective effect on all-cause mortality, not only coronary heart disease...."