A study team at Yale has found that patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, or NHL, who drank wine at least twenty-five years before their diagnosis had a 25 to 35 percent reduced risk of relapse, secondary cancer or death. Those who specifically suffered from diffuse large B-cell lymphoma--one of the more common types of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in the United States, accounting for about 1 out of every 3 cases--had as much as a 60 percent reduced risk.
About NHL
NHL is the fifth most common cancer in the United States. In the last thirty-five years, reports the Lymphoma Research Foundation, the incidence of non-Hodgkin lymphoma has nearly doubled. According to the American Cancer Society NHL's cause in most cases remains unexplained, and its risk factors are obscure. There is growing suspicion that a weakened immune system and exposure to chemicals like pesticides, fertilizers and solvents may be instrumental in development of NHL, but evidence is as yet more anecdotal than scientific. There is greater incidence of NHL among men than women, and white males are afflicted more often than their Black, Hispanic, and Asian counterparts.
Previous Research Supports the Yale Findings
- While in men a high consumption of beer and spirits is associated with an increased risk of lung cancer, Danish researchers at Copenhagen University report that wine intake may protect against the development of the carcinoma.
- A 1999 study reported in the British Journal of Cancer found that moderate alcohol consumption is inversely associated with the risk of NHL in older women, and that the amount of alcohol consumed, rather than the type of alcoholic beverages, appeared to be the main effect determinant--although red wine had the most distinct effect.
- In 2002 a study appearing in American Journal of Epidemiology associated consumption of wine--but not of beer or spirits--with reduced risk of non-Hodgkin Lymphoma among American men aged 32–60 years in the United States.
More Evidence of Wine's Benefits
The Yale findings, presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 100th Annual Meeting in April, 2009, suggested that the evidence is becoming clearer that moderate consumption of wine has health rewards. (Beer and/or liquor consumption did not show a similar benefit.) "This conclusion is controversial, because excessive drinking has a negative social and health impact, and it is difficult to define what is moderate and what is excessive," said Xuesong Han, the first author of the study. "However, we are continually seeing a link between wine and positive outcomes in many cancers."
A Possible Explanation
Many therapeutic agents have mechanisms or biochemical pathways that are poorly understood, if understood at all. An entity in wine possibly responsible is resveratrol, a form of naturally-occurring plant antibiotic found largely in grape skins, especially the red variety. Resveratrol is a potential cancer chemopreventive agent, according to the journal Science. Resveratrol, which seems to have antioxidant, antiaging and free radical scavinging properties, also has been reported to have anticarcinogenic effects on human lymphoma cells. It is suspected that resveratrol is a possible explanation for the widely reported "French Paradox"-- the low incidence of heart disease among the wine-drinking French people, who eat a relatively high-fat diet.
George Daleiden - I was a science major in college and later a career member of the Institute of Food Technologists. I worked in the processed food and ...
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