Wine and chocolate compound may aid against deadly virus, K-State researchers say
Kansas State researchers have discovered that a compound found in red wine and chocolate, as well as other plant-based food items, may be capable of preventing smallpox and similar viruses from replicating in human cells.
The compound is called resveratrol, and it's also found in plants such as grapes, cocoa beans, peanuts and blueberries, Shuai Cao, a postdoctoral researcher studying the effects of resveratrol on viruses, told K-State News.
Cao, biology doctoral student Anil Pant and assistant professor of biology Zhilong Yang teamed up with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study resveratrol. Their findings — "Suppression of Poxvirus Replication by Resveratrol" — were recently published in Frontiers in Microbiology.
The researchers took human cells cultures infected by a virus similar to the one that causes smallpox (the same virus that is used in a vaccine to fight smallpox) and combined it with varying amounts of resveratrol.
The cultures with high amounts of resveratrol appeared to prevent the virus from replicating in its early stages and spreading further.
"In order for a poxvirus to infect a host, it has to first enter a cell and make a lot of copies of its genome inside the host cell," Pant said in a university interview. "Our research has shown that resveratrol inhibits vaccinia virus from making copies of its DNA and genome."
Similar experiments revealed that resveratrol also works to inhibit monkeypox, and researchers believe it is likely that the compound can prevent all poxviruses from spreading.
The researchers hope that some day resveratrol an be taken from fruits and used with other treatments to fight viruses, including treatments that patients may have developed a drug resistance to.
An important FYI to our readers who might be inclined to stock up on wine and chocolates after reading this article.
Researchers say the success of the study required higher concentrations of the resveratrol compound than are found in food.
This story was originally published March 1, 2018 at 3:46 PM with the headline "Wine and chocolate compound may aid against deadly virus, K-State researchers say."