Resveratrol

Metabolic trials in adults

• Timmers 2011 was a randomized double-blind crossover trial of 150 mg a day for 30 days in 11 healthy obese men. Resveratrol lowered sleeping and resting metabolic rate, activated AMPK and raised SIRT1 and PGC-1alpha protein in muscle, lowered liver fat, blood glucose, triglycerides and inflammation markers, and lowered systolic blood pressure; the abstract names no single primary endpoint, and one coauthor worked for the company that made the resveratrol used (PMID: 22055504).
• In Poulsen 2013, a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial, 24 obese men (12 per group) took 500 mg three times a day or placebo for 4 weeks. The primary outcome, insulin sensitivity measured by clamp, was not improved, and there was no effect on resting energy expenditure, blood pressure, fat oxidation, ectopic or visceral fat, or inflammatory and metabolic markers (PMID: 23193181).
• Yoshino 2012, a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial, split 45 nonobese postmenopausal women among placebo, 75 mg a day of resveratrol and calorie restriction (15 per group) for 12 weeks. Resveratrol raised plasma resveratrol but did not change resting metabolic rate, body composition, plasma lipids, inflammatory markers, insulin sensitivity of liver, muscle or fat, or AMPK, SIRT1, NAMPT or PPARGC1A in muscle or fat (PMID: 23102619).
• A 2021 umbrella review of meta-analyses in type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome and fatty liver disease found that for almost all outcomes the effect of resveratrol was trivial, the certainty of evidence very low to low, or the number of trials too small, with a clinically important short-term fall in HbA1c (mean difference -1.05 percent, moderate certainty) as the exception (PMID: 34320173). A 2026 umbrella review of 45 systematic reviews rated four findings as high certainty: smaller waist circumference, lower total cholesterol in overweight adults, and lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure in type 2 diabetes (PMID: 41987155).

Brain and cognition trials

• Turner 2015 was a 52-week randomized double-blind placebo-controlled phase 2 trial in 119 people with mild to moderate Alzheimer disease, with a dose of 500 mg once a day rising every 13 weeks to 1,000 mg twice a day. The primary outcomes were safety, spinal fluid and plasma amyloid and tau biomarkers, and MRI brain volume. Resveratrol and its metabolites reached spinal fluid; amyloid-beta 40 in spinal fluid and plasma fell more with placebo than with resveratrol, and brain volume loss was greater with resveratrol (PMID: 26362286).
• Witte 2014 studied 46 healthy overweight adults aged 50 to 75 over 26 weeks. The 23 participants who completed 200 mg of resveratrol a day, taken in capsules that also contained quercetin, retained more words over 30 minutes than 23 matched placebo participants (p=0.038), with lower HbA1c and higher hippocampal functional connectivity (PMID: 24899709).
• Huhn 2018 tested 200 mg a day for 26 weeks in a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial in 60 adults aged 60 to 79. The main outcome, verbal memory on the California Verbal Learning Task, did not improve, so the earlier memory result was not repeated (PMID: 29548848).
• Thaung Zaw 2020 was a randomized placebo-controlled trial of 75 mg twice a day for 12 months in postmenopausal women aged 45 to 85. In the 129 women included in the analysis, the primary outcome, an overall cognitive performance score, improved compared with placebo (p<0.001) (PMID: 32244933). The University of Newcastle trial was supported by an Australian government fellowship, and the maker of the resveratrol supplied the capsules and supplementary funding (PMID: 32244933). Across the full 24-month, two-period crossover design of the same trial in 125 women, a composite pain score, somatic menopausal symptoms and general well-being improved with resveratrol as secondary outcomes (PMID: 32881835).

Pain

• ARTHROL (Nguyen 2024) was a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled phase 3 trial in 142 adults with painful knee osteoarthritis in France, at 40 mg twice a day for 1 week then 20 mg twice a day for 6 months. The primary outcome, change in knee pain at 3 months, did not differ from placebo (difference -0.6 on a 100-point scale, p=0.88) (PMID: 39137167).

Exercise

• Gliemann 2013 was a randomized double-blind trial of 250 mg a day with 8 weeks of high-intensity training in 27 inactive men aged about 65. Resveratrol blunted the training gains in maximal oxygen uptake, blood pressure and blood lipids seen with placebo (PMID: 23878368).

Cancer-related studies

• In Brown 2010, 40 healthy volunteers took 0.5 to 5 g a day for 29 days, and circulating IGF-I and IGFBP-3 fell from their starting values, most at 2.5 g a day (PMID: 20935227).
• SRT501 was given at 5 g a day, alone or with bortezomib, in an open-label phase 2 trial in 24 patients with multiple myeloma. The trial was terminated after 24 patients had enrolled, and its posted results include kidney failure among the serious adverse events (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00920556; PMID: 23205612).

Observational data

• InCHIANTI was a prospective cohort of 783 Italians aged 65 or older followed for 9 years. Urinary resveratrol metabolites from the usual diet were not linked to all-cause mortality, inflammatory markers, cardiovascular disease or cancer; 34.4 percent of the lowest quartile and 37.4 percent of the highest quartile died (PMID: 24819981).

Animal lifespan studies

• In yeast, resveratrol extended lifespan by 70 percent in the 2003 report (PMID: 12939617), but showed no detectable effect on lifespan in three yeast strain backgrounds in a 2005 study (PMID: 15684413).
• Resveratrol extended lifespan in worms and flies in a 2004 report (PMID: 15254550); in later work on worms and flies, a University College London group found no significant effect on fly lifespan in seven independent trials and variable small effects in worms, among them worms lacking sir-2.1 (PMID: 17875315).
• Resveratrol in food increased median and maximum lifespan in a dose-dependent way in the killifish Nothobranchius furzeri, which lives at most 13 weeks in captivity (PMID: 16461283).
• In mice on a high-calorie diet, resveratrol shifted the physiology of middle-aged mice toward that of mice on a standard diet and significantly increased their survival (PMID: 17086191).
• In mice on a standard diet, resveratrol started at 12 months of age reduced several signs of aging, such as albuminuria, cataracts and bone loss, but did not extend lifespan (PMID: 18599363).
• The NIA Interventions Testing Program tests compounds in genetically heterogeneous mice at three sites using the same protocol (PMID: 27923560). Resveratrol at 300 or 1,200 ppm in food from 12 months of age did not affect survival in either sex (PMID: 20974732), and a second test that began at 4 months of age also found no significant effect on lifespan in males or females (PMID: 22451473).
• A 2012 meta-analysis of 19 papers in six species found the clearest lifespan effects in yeast and nematodes, less reliable effects in most other species, and concluded that few species conclusively show life extension with resveratrol (PMID: 22718956).

Retracted laboratory papers

PubMed marks eight resveratrol papers from one laboratory at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine's Cardiovascular Research Center, published from 2002 to 2014 and mostly on heart protection in rats, as retracted publications (PubMed search, 26 October 2026; for example PMID: 12003802 and PMID: 24669285). None of them is cited elsewhere in this guide.

In a 52-week phase 2 trial in 119 people with mild to moderate Alzheimer disease, with doses rising to 1,000 mg twice a day, the most common adverse events were nausea, diarrhea and weight loss, and brain volume loss on MRI was greater with resveratrol than with placebo (PMID: 26362286). In a 12-month trial of 75 mg twice a day in postmenopausal women, the four serious adverse events recorded were all in the placebo group (PMID: 32244933). The 142-person knee osteoarthritis trial recorded serious adverse events, none judged related to the study treatment, in 3 people on resveratrol and 2 on placebo (PMID: 39137167).

Kidney failure in a myeloma trial

In a phase 2 trial in 24 people with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma, sponsored by Sirtris (then a GSK company), SRT501, a resveratrol product given as an oral suspension, was taken at 5 g a day, alone or with the cancer drug bortezomib. The posted results list serious adverse events in 12 of the 24, among them acute renal failure in 3, renal failure in 2 and renal impairment in 1, and 16 participants withdrew because of adverse events (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00920556). The trial was terminated, and its results were published as a letter (PMID: 23205612).

Exercise training

In 27 physically inactive men aged about 65 who did 8 weeks of high-intensity exercise training, the rise in maximal oxygen uptake was 45 percent greater with placebo than with 250 mg of trans-resveratrol a day, mean arterial pressure fell only with placebo, and resveratrol abolished the training gains in LDL cholesterol, the total-to-HDL cholesterol ratio and triglycerides (PMID: 23878368).

Drug-metabolizing enzymes

In 42 healthy volunteers, 1 g of resveratrol a day for 4 weeks inhibited the phenotypic activity of the liver enzymes CYP3A4, CYP2D6 and CYP2C9 and induced CYP1A2 (PMID: 20716633).

Pregnancy (animal data only)

No human pregnancy data were found. In Japanese macaques fed a Western-style diet, resveratrol given throughout pregnancy raised fetal pancreatic islet capillary density above control levels, and the authors advised against resveratrol use in pregnancy until the long-term consequences are known (PMID: 24844258).