“Son of Resveratrol” – pterostilbene – emerges as contender in the battle against diseases of aging, reports USDA.

You may not have heard of pterostilbene (pronounced “tero-STILL-bean”) yet. But this berry compound’s prospects for inhibiting breast cancer, diabetes, and LDL cholesterol in humans may soon make it as well known as other health-enhancing natural substances.

“The more we study pterostilbene, the more we see its huge potential in the human health field,” says chemist Agnes Rimando of ARS’s Natural Products Utilization Research Laboratory in Oxford, Mississippi. Her animal studies on the compound have led to several groundbreaking discoveries.

Pterostilbene is one of many aromatic hydrocarbons called “stilbenes.” It’s a derivative of resveratrol, a compound found in large quantities in the skins of red grapes. Resveratrol burst on the health scene more than a decade ago, when it was found to have cardiovascular and cancer-fighting benefits.

Heart-ening Results

Rimando and colleagues found that pterostilbene can help lower cholesterol and prevent heart disease. They discovered that pterostilbene was similar in activity to ciprofibrate, a commercial drug that lowers LDL cholesterol and triglycerides. “But ciprofibrate can have side effects such as muscle pain and nausea,” says Rimando. “Pterostilbene targets the same specific receptor as ciprofibrate, but it’s likely to have fewer side effects.”

The focus of this work was to determine the ability of pterostilbene and related compounds to activate the peroxisome proliferator activated receptor alpha, or PPARa, a protein in the cell nucleus associated with metabolism that modulates blood lipid levels.

Triglycerides, the chemical form in which fats occur in plants and animals, are a combination of three fatty acids with glycerol. As with cholesterol, elevated levels of triglycerides in the blood have been linked to cardiovascular diseases. Rimando and her colleagues found that the triglyceride-lowering ability of pterostilbene rivals that of ciprofibrate.

The announcements generated a wave of attention for pterostilbene, not only in the United States but in other countries as well. At least two news organizations in Great Britain directly attributed a boom in British blueberry sales to Rimando’s findings. And the Oxford lab’s results have since been cited by companies marketing products ranging from blueberry extract to juice concentrate to commercially available pterostilbene itself.

Latest Anti-Cancer Findings

In her latest studies, Rimando and scientists at the University of Medical Science in Poznañ, Poland demonstrated that pterostilbene, as well as other analogs of resveratrol, potently inhibits an enzyme called “cytochrome P450.”

Cytochrome P450 enzymes activate a variety of compounds known as “procarcinogens,” which can turn substances such as cigarette smoke and pesticides into carcinogens.

“Pterostilbene showed strong inhibitory activity—much more than resveratrol—against a particular form of cytochrome P450,” Rimando says.

For the complete USDA story, see our separate page on pterostilbene.