NEW YORK: According to a study, drinking green tea every day and an odd glass of red wine may help lessen plaques in the brain linked to Alzheimer's disease.

Green tea catechins and resveratrol, which can be found in red wine and other foods, were discovered by Tufts University researchers to be two common substances that reduced the formation of plaques in neural cells with little to no negative effects.

They examined the effects of 21 different substances on the development of sticky beta-amyloid plaques in brain cells affected by Alzheimer's disease in a laboratory setting. Alzheimer's patients' brains develop these plaques. The journal Free Radical Biology and Medicine published the data that the researchers had discovered.

Dana Cairns, a research associate in the Kaplan Lab in the School of Engineering who led the research, said that finding a substance "that could diminish the plaques regardless of the virus component would be ideal, because that would show that regardless of the cause of Alzheimer's, you might still see some kind of improvement."

Compounds that showed promise in the initial screening were evaluated in the 3D neural tissue model after first being tested in simpler models.

A non-reactive silk sponge is used to generate the model, and it is seeded with human skin cells that have undergone genetic reprogramming to become neural stem cell progenitors.

These cells multiply and fill the sponge, "which enables the construction of 3D network of neurons comparable to what you'd see in the human brain," according to Cairns.

According to Cairns, the initial screening revealed five compounds exhibited "very robust protection of these plaques."  They also discovered that curcumin from turmeric, the diabetic drug Metformin, and a substance called citicoline prevented plaques from developing but did not have antiviral effects, in addition to the green tea components and resveratrol.

Resveratrol has been studied for its potential as an anti-aging supplement, and green tea catechins, chemicals in tea leaves that have an antioxidant effect, have been investigated as a potential cancer treatment.

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