ABSTRACT
In 1979, St. Leger et al. drew attention to the cardioprotective effects of wine when they described an inverse relationship between wine consumption and deaths from CVD for Europe, North America, and Australasia. A few years later, French epidemiologists formulated the “French paradox” concept (Renaud and de Lorgeril 1992; Ferrières 2004). This concept, founded on the observation of low CHD in France, is usually dened as the lower-than-expected CHD mortality rate in a country where classic CHD risk factors are not less prevalent than in other industrialized countries and where, in addition, the diet has historically always been rich in saturated animal fat and cholesterol (de Lorgeril et al. 2002b; Ferrières 2004). In the 1990s, several authors emphasized the fact that consumption of wine was higher in France compared with most Western countries and proposed that wine-induced inhibition of platelet reactivity and increase in high density lipoproteins (HDL) may well be one explanation for protection from CVD in France (Renaud and de Lorgeril 1992; Rimm et al. 1999).
