Wine News

Drinking a glass of red wine a day can cut a man's risk of prostate cancer in half, and the protective effect appears to be strongest against the most aggressive forms of the disease, according to a new study led by investigators at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

The findings, by Janet L. Stanford and colleagues in Fred Hutchinson's Public Health Sciences Division, appear online in The International Journal of Cancer.

"We found that men who consumed four or more glasses of red wine per week reduced their risk of prostate cancer by 50 percent," Stanford said. "Among men who consumed four or more 4-ounce glasses of red wine per week, we saw about a 60 percent lower incidence of the more aggressive types of prostate cancer," said Stanford, senior author of the study. "The more clinically aggressive prostate cancer is where the strongest reduction in risk was observed."

Stanford and colleagues believe that is the presence of the antioxdant, Resveratrol, which is abundant in the skins of red grapes but much less so in the skins of white grapes which is the key to their findings. "Even though this study is based on relatively small numbers, the results are very intriguing and suggest that the potential beneficial effect of red wine and resveratrol - if indeed resveratrol is the active chemopreventive agent involved - would be very important, because it's the more aggressive forms of prostate cancer than are most important to prevent," she said.

Stanford and colleagues plan to seek funding to conduct a larger study to see if their results hold up.