A toothbrush may not be handy at the dinner table, but new research suggests moderate consumption of red wine helps to rinse teeth clean of bacteria during and after meals.
The findings, accepted for publication in the journal Food Chemistry, add to the growing list of health benefits associated with drinking wine. Prior research has linked moderate red wine intake with everything from improved longevity to diminished risk of cardiovascular and neurological diseases.
Teetotalers can also enjoy dental benefits, since the new study was conducted with nonalcoholic red wine.
Co-author Gabriella Gazzani explained to Discovery News that alcohol's cavity-preventing benefits are already well known. She and her colleagues therefore investigated "dealcoholized red wine to verify if substances different from ethanol with anti-Strep properties occur in this beverage."
To do so, Gazzani, a professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at Pavia University, and her team purchased a high quality Italian red wine from the Veneto region. They removed the beverage's alcohol using a technique called vacuum concentration.
The researchers then cultured Streptococcus mutans, common bacteria that feed on sugars in food and contribute to tooth enamel demineralization, which often results in cavities.
In the lab, the bacteria easily mixed with saliva and saliva-coated pulled teeth, along with saliva-coated calcium ceramic beads. When the nonalcoholic red wine was added to each one, however, the wine prevented S. mutans from clinging to teeth and saliva.
The researchers next determined that the active components in red wine that protect teeth are proanthocyanidins, naturally occurring flavonoid compounds previously found to have antioxidant properties. The compounds are in many plant edibles, such as apples, cinnamon, cocoa and teas.
Although proanthocyanidins are in grape seeds and skin, it remains unclear if grape juice also has tooth-cleansing properties.
"We have no data on grape juice, and we think that it is not possible to draw conclusions on grape juice on the basis of the results obtained for red wine due to the fact that grape juice and wine have very different chemical compositions," Gazzani said.
She does, however, think that proanthocyanidins could be separated from wine and studied for their potential oral health benefits. Acids and sugars in some wines may actually contribute to tooth decay, so isolating wine's tooth-supporting components could lead to an even more beneficial product, at least from a dentistry standpoint.
In separate research, scientists from Laval University in Quebec found that polyphenols in red wine also help to control immune cell response in gums to bacterial infection.
The Canadian study, presented at the 35th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Dental Research, found that red wine polyphenols may both prevent and treat inflammatory gum diseases, including periodontitis, which affects 15 percent of adults between the ages of 21 and 50 and 65 percent of adults over the age of 50.
In the future, Gazzani and her colleagues hope to conduct their studies in vivo on consumers of red wine.
By Jennifer Viegas
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