Red Wine and the French Paradox

France is renowned for its wine cultivation and ubiquitous incorporation of the beverage into its everyday culture. Interestingly, the French have been noted for their low incidence of coronary heart diseases, a phenomenon popularly termed the “French Paradox.” Some have speculated that this may be linked to the relatively high consumption of red wine, which is known to have a number of antioxidants present. Among these is a stilbenoid called resveratrol. You may have read about resveratrol in the news in recent years. Ever since an influential 1997 article published in the prestigious journal Science demonstrated its chemopreventative activity, there has been ongoing research to explore its therapeutic effects on human health, addressing such disparate conditions such as heart disease, neurological disorders, and senescence.  

                Although there remains much to be done in resveratrol research, particularly in translating efficacy results to in vivo human clinical trials, this intriguing compound seems to show promise as a therapeutic agent. For this reason, I thought it would make a pertinent area of focus for research using the Cogent TYPE-C Silica™ columns. In the study, I addressed two major problems with resveratrol quantitative analysis in red wine samples: low sensitivity and poor specificity.

                Some laboratories may use UV detection while others require LC-MS. Using either detection method, these obstacles can be overcome. With UV detection, I employed a sample cleanup/preconcentration technique using Cogent TYPE-C Silica™ phases packed in a microextraction bed. This helped remove interfering peaks in the resulting chromatograms while also providing a 2X concentration increase, affording higher sensitivity. For LC-MS, you can obtain excellent sensitivity due to the nature of the MS detector, which is far greater than UV for this type of analyte. Furthermore, use of extracted ion chromatograms (EICs) allows you to obtain a clean chromatogram corresponding to the m/z of the resveratrol [M + H]⁺ ion.

                You can use these method strategies in your investigations of resveratrol in not just wine, but a variety of other matrices such as plasma samples. In particular, LC-MS is a powerful tool that will undoubtedly be a part of these quantitative studies more and more in the future. Cogent TYPE-C Silica™ columns offer advantages for these types of analyses, which I describe in detail in a research article published in LC-GC North America magazine.

Click here for the article!