Red Wine May Protect Against Depression

A natural anti-inflammatory agent found in red wine and the skin of red grapes may help to ease depressive-like behaviors related to social stress exposure, according to new research presented Monday at the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET) Annual Meeting in Boston.

The new study demonstrated that daily treatment with resveratrol was protective against developing a depressive-like state in rodents exposed to social stress.
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“Our findings highlight the importance of neuroinflammation in the development of social stress-induced depressive-like behavior and demonstrate the therapeutic effectiveness of the natural anti-inflammatory agent resveratrol in treatment of this condition,” says lead researcher Susan K. Wood, PhD, assistant professor at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Columbia.

Animals who are most vulnerable to social stress develop increased inflammation in certain regions of the brain as well as developing anhedonia, a depressive-like behavior defined by a reduction in the ability to enjoy pleasurable stimuli.

Wood and her colleagues a rodent model to mimic social stress, in which a larger, more aggressive rodent acts as a bully. In a previous study, they found that some of the bullied rats developed depressive-like behaviors and inflammation, while rats that did not develop depressive-like behaviors showed no inflammation.

In this new study, they repeated the experiment with one significant change—they gave the bullied rats a daily dose of resveratrol roughly equal to the amount found in 6 glasses of wine.

They demonstrated that this daily dose of 10 mg/kg of resveratrol 1 week before stress exposure and just prior to each of the 5 daily exposures to social stress was effective in blocking the stress-induced inflammation and also blocked the development of anhedonia in the susceptible subset of rats. 

“This suggests that the anti-inflammatory properties of resveratrol could protect against the inflammatory and anhedonic consequences of social stress,” Wood says. “Since the use of natural compounds to treat inflammatory-related disorders is a relatively understudied area, we hope this research encourages others to explore the clinical effectiveness of resveratrol and other natural agents as effective anti-inflammatory-based anti-depressant compounds.”

Wood and her colleagues are currently exploring if treatment with resveratrol can reverse the effects of depressive-like behaviors after repeated exposure to social stress. 

“If successful, our work has the potential to lay the groundwork for future clinical studies evaluating the effectiveness of resveratrol to treat symptoms associated depressive-like behaviors after they have developed,” she says.

—Colleen Mullarkey

Reference

Finnell JE, Lombard CM, Singh N, Nagarkatti M, Nagarkatti P, Wood CS, and Wood SK.

Protective effects of resveratrol on social stress-induced neuroinflammation and depressive-like behavior. Presented at the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics Annual Meeting, Boston, Massachusetts. March 30, 2015. Abstract D31-770.5.