Red-Wine Compound Makes Basic Organisms Live Longer, Study Finds

A new investigation into longevity reveals that adding resveratrol to the diets of earthworms and fruit flies increases their life spans

Jacob Gaffney
Posted: July 23, 2004

A team of American scientists has successfully increased the life span of fruit flies and earthworms by adding resveratrol, a compound found in red wine, to their diets. The group hopes their research into longevity could eventually turn up a way to prolong human life and good health, though such a development is far off in the future, they cautioned.

Their recent work, published in the July 8 issue of Nature, shows that resveratrol significantly extended the lives of fruit flies and worms compared with those that were not fed the compound. The researchers also noted that the flies, but not the worms, showed higher levels of reproduction when exposed to resveratrol.

Last year, study coauthor David Sinclair, from Harvard Medical School, found that resveratrol can extend the life span of yeast by 70 percent on average. This time, he and a team of scientists from Harvard, the University of Connecticut Health Center and Brown University looked at whether the compound can alter the longevity of multicellular organisms.

"We found this chemical that can extend the life span of every organism we give it to," Sinclair said. "If you give these compounds to these animals, they are healthier and longer-lived and just as active."

Resveratrol is found abundantly in grapes, certain nuts and berries and even some types of wheat. Recent studies have shown that the compound may help reduce the growth of skin melanomas, kill breast cancer cells, lower cholesterol levels and improve cardiovascular health.

Sinclair's team decided to experiment on fruit flies and worms because the animals "can be genetically engineered easily and have short life spans," he said.

The researchers placed adult worms onto two separate plates, five to a plate, and the fruit flies into two separate 1-liter jars, with 75 males and 75 females in each jar. For one group, both species were fed normally; in the other group, resveratrol was added to their diets in small amounts, 100 micromolars (a measure of a substance's concentration in a solution) every two days. Every day, the scientists checked for dead worms and dead flies, and counted and removed them from the groups.

The team observed that the worms with the resveratrol-supplemented diet lived an average of 14 percent to 24 percent longer than those with a regular diet. The flies with resveratrol in their diets lived up to 29 percent longer than the flies that didn't feed on the compound. The scientists repeated the experiment several times, with similar results.

The researchers also noted that the flies on resveratrol "were laying significantly more eggs than control-fed females." The hermaphroditic worms reproduced at a constant rate regardless of their diet.

In Sinclair's previous study on yeast cells, his team theorized that resveratrol may activate a group of enzymes, called sirtuins, that may control aging to a degree. With the sirtuins mobilized, the yeast cells seemed better equipped to prevent the breakdown of their DNA, allowing for a longer life.

For the current study, the scientists used genetic engineering to tinker with the worms' and flies' DNA; when the creatures lacked the ability to activate sirtuin, the benefits of resveratrol did not kick in. The resveratrol-fed flies and worms that could not activate sirtuins lived the same average length of time as the normal organisms that were not fed resveratrol.

Sinclair plans to continue this line of research with similar experiments on mice. But he said that using methods to activate sirtuins in humans is a long way off, and may never work. Whether resveratrol will help humans to live longer is "too early to say," he said. "Even if we are right about [sirtuins] being a controller for human aging, the availability of resveratrol is always going to be an issue in larger organisms such as ourselves."

For a comprehensive look at the potential health benefits of drinking wine, check out senior editor Per-Henrik Mansson's feature Eat Well, Drink Wisely, Live Longer: The Science Behind A Healthy Life With Wine

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