THE mystery of how their love of fine wine saves the French from some cancers
has finally been solved.
Resveratrol, a substance found in many grapes such as scuppernong, a
muscadine variety, was recently shown to help prevent heart disease and certain
types of cancer. Now Minnie Holmes-McNary of the University of North Carolina
has found that it works by promoting programmed cell death, a process that goes
wrong in cancer cells.
It blocks NF-kappa B, a protein that turns off the cell killing process, she
says in the July issue of Cancer Research.
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