613 Wine histamine content does not influence the tolerance of wine in normal subjects

Biogenie amines, mainly histamine and tyramine have been accused of being the cause of red wine adverse reactions showing themselves most often in the form of a headache or a facial flush.Despite the fact that wine intolerance is frequent, it is surprising that few studies on the effects of histamine contained in wine have been performed in humans.The purpose of this study was to analyse the effect of a histamine free and histamine rich wine on the tolerance of wine in normal subjects.Red wine (200 ml) were administred to 8 healthy subjects at 12 o'clock.Two types of red wine were tested : a sample containing undetectable amount of histamine and 0.3 mga of tyramine and a sample with 22.8 mg/I of histamine and 14.2 mg/l of tyramine.Each subject received each wine at an imervall of one week at least and had the same histamine-low diet for each test.At the times 0, 10, 30 and 45 minutes, a blood sample was collected to measure histamine (H) and methylhistamine (MH) levels.Urine from patients was collected 5 hr before and 5 hr after ingestion of wine to measure MH.MH was measured by the Pharmaeia ILIA and histamine by the Immunotech RIA No subjects presented adverse reaction.No significant changes in plasma H and MH, in urinary MH were noted following ingestion of histamine free or rich wine.This study clearly demonstrates that histamine contain does not influence the tolerance of red wine in healthy subjects.Regarding to the fact that subjects presenting adverse reaction to wine could have enzymatic deficiencies inducing intolerance, it would be interesting to reproduce the same study with wine intolerant patients.