Chapter 9E
Health-Promoting Effects of Wine Phenolics
Alberto Davalos and Miguel A. Lasunci ́ ́on
Contents
9E.1 Bioavailability.................... ........................................ 572
9E.2 AntioxidantPropertiesandVascularEffects ................................... 573
9E.3 NADPHOxidase .......................................................... 575
9E.4 EffectsonLipidMetabolism ................................................ 577
9E.5 LifeSpan ................................................................ 580
References ............................................................... 582
The first systematic observations concerning the health-promoting effects of wine
consumption were obtained within the MONICA project (WHO 1989), a world-
wide monitoring system for cardiovascular disease organized by the World Health
Organization. Despite the similar prevalence of risk factors such as hypercholes-
terolemia, hypertension, diabetes and high intake of saturated fats in different west-
ern industrialized nations, deaths from coronary heart disease are much lower in
France than in the United Kingdom and USA. This has been attributed to the higher
consumption of alcohol in France, particularly to the regular drinking of red wine
(Renaud and de Lorgeril 1992; St Leger et al. 1979). As consumption of ethanol
can itself produce beneficial effects similar to those attributed to wine consump-
tion, such as an increase in high density lipoproteins (HDL) and a decrease in
platelet aggregation (Mukamal et al. 2005; Sesso 2001), the relative contribution
of alcohol to the effects of wine are unclear, and efforts have been made to identify
specific components of red wine that account for the reduction of coronary heart
disease in the context of the “French paradox.” Polyphenols from red wine have
been reported to exert potent antioxidant effects that prevent low-density lipoprotein
(LDL) oxidation (Frankel et al. 1993; Fuhrman et al. 1995; Nigdikar et al. 1998),
and despite some reports of the absence of an association (Sesso et al. 2003), they
are serious candidates to explain the protective effects of vegetable and fruit con-
sumption against cancer and cardiovascular diseases (Arts and Hollman 2005; Mink
A. D ́avalos (B)
Servicio de Bioqu ́ımica-Investigaci ́on, Hospital Ram ́on y Cajal, Ctra. de Colmenar, km 9, E-28034,
Instituto de Salud CarlosIII, Madrid, Spain
e-mail: [email protected]
M.V. Moreno-Arribas, M.C. Polo (eds.),Wine Chemistry and Biochemistry,
DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-74118-521,©CSpringer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009
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