Welcome to my blog with some the most recent articles which have caught my attention. As with all of the others, they have come from the national library of medicine and are available to anyone at pubmed.com. This month again we are looking at articles published on current research on resveratrol.
Asthma-- this paper was published from Shanghai University. They looked at resveratrol which is a natural antioxidant and anti-inflammatory and what benefit it might have in asthma. Asthma was induced medically in mice. Half of them had been pretreated with resveratrol and the other half were not. The group on resveratrol had significantly less chemical changes in the lungs that are commonly associated with asthma than the group on a placebo. This has promise in prevention of asthma attacks and we look forward to human studies. PMID 25739523
Chemotherapy-- Hebei University in the Peoples Republic of China published a study combining the use of 5FU, a common chemotherapy agent, with resveratrol. They were using cell cultures of skin cancers and found that resveratrol enhanced the antitumor effect of 5-FU. In living rat studies, the animals were given a drug that causes skin cancer and then were treated with either a placebo, 5-FU, or a combination of resveratrol and 5-FU. There was more rapid and complete regression of the cancers in the group treated with both. Resveratrol increased the benefit of the chemotherapy agent without adding to complications or side effects. PMID 2573603
Heart attacks-- A study was published from Xinjiang University in China. This was done on rats who had a main artery to the heart tied off temporarily creating an artificial heart attack and then the heart was studied after removing the suture from the artery. This is technically called a hypoxia–reperfusion study and would be similar to a person having a blood clot in that artery, causing damage to the heart and then having the clot removed and the blood flow reestablished. A group of rats was divided into adult rats, and elderly rats. Each of those groups was then divided into those receiving resveratrol before the surgery and those who did not. The adult group on resveratrol did the best with minimal muscle damage and more rapid recovery. The elderly group on resveratrol was second in improvement and both groups not on resveratrol did not have nearly as much recovery and had more muscle damage. There was a cardioprotective effect by resveratrol, both in the adult and in the older animals studied. PMID 25715432
Uterine fibroids-- from the Peoples Hospital in Wezhou, China was a study on benign muscular tumors of the uterus commonly known as fibroids. As with other studies, half of the mice were treated with resveratrol and the other half were not. This was done after uterine tumors were initiated by giving all of the mice tamoxifen. At 16 weeks all mice had the uterine tumors.. Those treated with resveratrol for 3 weeks were then studied and compared to those not treated. The group on resveratrol had less infiltration of normal healthy uterine muscle by the tumors than those not treated. It reduced uterine contractility and they reported a decrease in pain in the treated half. This has promise for a safe medical treatment for uterine fibroids. PMID 25701840
I hope these have been of interest to my readers and look forward to next month's articles. Dr. Bob
