Dealcoholized Red and White Wines Decrease Oxidative Stress Associated with Inflammation in Rats

When I read this article the first time (I ended up reading it 3 times!) I was very lost and so I thought it would be a good idea to do my blog this week on the article itself. Hopefully this sum up of the information will help you better understand the article.


This article looked at the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory affects of dealcoholized red and white wine. Both of theses affects are due to the polyphenols that are present in wine.


In the study they had three groups of rats, a control group that was fed standard food, a group that was fed food containing dealcoholized red wine (DRW), and a group that was fed food containing dealcoholized white wine (DWW). After 15 days the authors induced a granuloma with carrageenan (a component of red seaweed) in all the rats from all three groups. After 24 hours blood from the heart and exudate from the granuloma was taken from all the rats.

In the blood and exudate total phenols was measured. TBARS, or thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances were measured. This shows the amount of malondialdehyde in the blood plasma and the exudate which demonstrates the amount of lipid peroxidation. Lipid peroxidation is the break down of lipids via free radicals (see figure below courtesy of Wikipedia). They also measured the amount of NO in the plasma and exudate and the ratio of L-citrulline vs L-arginine. This ratio can be used as an indication of iNOS activity.



The authors also removed polymorphonuclear (PMN) leukocytes from each of the three groups of rats. When these cells are activated they cause the release of superoxide anion (O2-) which is generated by NADPH oxidase and xanthine oxidase. PMN cells also release NO, which is generated by iNOS activity. Once released O2- will cause damage while the effects of NO release depends on the amount released, the location of their release, and what other reactive species are present. With these removed cells, the authors could then measure O2- and NO production by the cells and the level of COX-2 activation. For the amount of NO they looked at both nitrites and nitrates, as well as the amount of L-citrulline formed from L-arginine which shows the iNOS activity as previously stated. To measure the amount of COX-2 activation the authors looked at the amount of PGE2 produced, which is a prostaglandin released due to COX-2 activation.


From all of these measurements the authors found that DRW had more polyphenolic compounds than DWW, which explained the slightly increased antioxidant abilities of DRW in comparison to DWW. They also found that with both DRW and DWW there was a decrease in the number of cells in the exudate, which they said was due to the fact that O2- will recruit leukocytes while NO inhibits this. Since there was a decrease in O2- and an increase in NO in the exudate for both of the wine groups then a decrease in cell number in the exudate was expected. One unexpected finding was that there was actually an increase in PGE2 in the DRW. The authors said that this might be due to something else in the wine that is interacting with the polyphenolic compounds. This was an important point in the paper, that though they see that polyphenolic compounds are the substances that are the most important in their rat model, in the human body the interactions of all the substances within metabolism make it hard to directly apply the results of the study to humans.

Hopefully this helps you with the reading the article, it sure helped me!