More on the benefits of wine for cognitive decline and dementia

Roger M Pinder
International Journal of Wine Research, York, UK

The beneficial impact of moderate and regular consumption of alcohol and wine for cognitive decline and the risks of dementia has been widely studied and reported.^1-4 The pages of the International Journal of Wine Research have seen two reviews of the field,^5,6 while our sister journal, Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, has also focused on this issue, first in 2006 with a research investigation in Danish women,⁷ and now in a more recent comprehensive review including 143 published papers.⁸ One of the more poignant aspects of the new publication is that the authors, Edward Neafsey and Michael Collins from Loyola University in Chicago, come from a background of experimental molecular pharmacology and wondered why moderate alcohol exposure appeared to protect rat hippocampal-entorhinal cortex brain slice cultures from the toxicity of amyloid-β, the protein that has been strongly implicated in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Their curiosity led to a literature search on whether alcohol protects against AD and other forms of cognitive impairment in humans, an endeavor that rather overwhelmed them with the immensity of the data.