Resveratrol: A Trusty Sidekick

Several months ago I wrote about how the skins of grapes contain copious amounts of a chemical called resveratrol. As I wrote at the time, resveratrol is an antioxidant that’s been found to be especially potent in fighting health abnormalities associated with diabetes. It’s also effective in warding off blood clots, and has been found to be a life extender when added to the diets of fish and mice. And according to a recent finding on resveratrol’s redemptive qualities, it can also be an effective treatment for those suffering from pancreatic cancer.

In my book, any finding that furthers the defeat of cancer is worthy of reportage. After all, cancer remains the second leading cause of death in the United States (behind heart disease). For pancreatic cancer alone, it’s estimated that 37,680 diagnoses will be made this year alone and nearly 34,300 people will die from it this year (it’s no coincidence that the diagnoses and deaths are similar). It’s therefore with a great sense of hope, optimism and encouragement that resveratrol has been deemed effective in treating people with pancreatic cancer.

I say “effective” because researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Center believe it can help halt the growth of cancer cells after they’ve formed, thus making cancer treatments like chemotherapy more effective in removing cancerous cells that form on the pancreas entirely.

They came to this conclusion after harvesting a group of cells that were infected with pancreatic cancer. They split the cells into two groups, one receiving a treatment similar to chemotherapy, the other also receiving a chemotherapy-based treatment, but with a 50 mg treatment of resveratrol as well. They write in the journal Advances in Experimental Medicine and Technology that between the two groups, the group treated with the resveratrol was more sensitive to the chemotherapy-based treatment, thus making the cells more likely to die as a result of that treatment.

This is an exciting finding, particularly because chemotherapy often proves less than effective in treating people with pancreatic cancer. The researchers believe this is because of the biology of the pancreas itself, as the abundance of enzymes the pancreas naturally produces – typically a good thing – flushes out the chemotherapy treatments before they can have any adversarial impact on the cancerous formations. The researchers say that the resveratrol enables the chemotherapy treatments to be more effective by forestalling the overproduction of pancreatic enzymes.

Resveratrol has a similar impact on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), as studies suggest antiviral drugs used to treat it are more effective when resveratrol is included in the treatment.

Whether it’s late night comedy acts, comic book heroes, characters in a novel or characters in a video game, the protagonist is almost always better with his sidekick: Carson had McMahon, Batman had Robin, Frodo had Sam, Mario had Luigi. Just as sidekicks can operate without the main man, so too can resveratrol. But when combined with traditional treatments – or traditional heroes, to continue with my metaphor – resveratrol and chemotherapy makes for a potent foe that cancerous cells will rue having to contending with.