Grapes and other foods made from grapes, including red wine, have long been thought beneficial to our health. New research comes to underline the idea, it’s true in mice this time, but this is just the beginning. Sooner or later scientists will be able to develop new therapies based on grapes which might help people too.

The study was the work of researchers from the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center in Ann Arbor and is published in the October issue of the Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences. They found that a diet with grapes could help fight high blood pressure resulting from a salty diet and could also reduce other cardiovascular risks and heart muscle damage.

Sixty rats were divided in five groups depending on how much salt was in their diet and whether they were given a dried grape powder made from regular table grapes (a mix of green, red and black varieties). The groups were as follows: (1) low salt only, (2) low salt plus grape powder, (3) high salt only, (4) high salt plus grape powder, and (5) high salt plus vasodilator hydralazine.

After 18 weeks, the researchers compared health benefits in the five groups and found that rats which fed on the grape powder had lower blood pressure, better heart function, reduced inflammation in their bodies and less heart muscle damage. Also rats that had the blood pressure medication and high salt diet also had lower blood pressure, but their heart damage was greater than in the grape powder fed groups. High blood pressure is a serious condition that can lead to coronary heart disease, heart failure, stroke, kidney failure and other serious health problems.

“These findings support our theory that something within the grapes themselves has a direct impact on cardiovascular risk, beyond the simple blood pressure-lowering impact that we already know can come from a diet rich in fruits and vegetables,” Mitchell Seymour of the Cardioprotection Research Laboratory at the University of Michigan said in a statement.

The study was partly sponsored by California grape producers.