Chocolate, red wine ingredient may slow Alzheimer’s, study says

A new study has found tantalizing evidence that a highly concentrated form of a compound found in red wine and dark chocolate might be able to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

But it’s likely that it’s because the compound, resveratrol, tricks the body into acting as if it’s not eating.

Scott Turner, director of the Memory Disorders Program at Georgetown University Medical Center and the study’s principal investigator, emphasized caution in interpreting the results of the Phase 2 clinical trial, saying further research is needed to determine whether the compound has a beneficial effect.

He also said people should not interpret the results to mean that they should up their consumption of wine or begin taking over-the-counter supplements.

But Turner said researchers were excited to find that resveratrol produced a measurable effect on an important biomarker of the disease’s advance in people who have mild or moderate Alzheimer’s: the level of an abnormal protein known as beta amyloid became stabilized in patients who consumed two grams of resveratrol a day.

Normally, the level of beta amyloid, which can be found in the bloodstream and in brain and spinal fluids, declines and changes in composition as Alzheimer’s advances, because the protein instead forms toxic beta amyloid plaques in the brain.

But in the patients taking resveratrol, the rate of decline in beta amyloid levels slowed. The reason is not clear, Turner said. But he said the study, which was published online Friday in the journal Neurology, lent further credence to the idea that resveratrol stimulates enzymes that slow down metabolism and age-related changes in the cell.