Coffee Consumption Protects Against Alzheimer's

Publishing their work in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, studied surviving participants in two long-term medical surveys that had been started in 1972. In 1998, over 1,400 survey participants, aged 65-79, had completed questionnaires again, after which 61 of them were identified as suffering from dementia, 48 of these cases being Alzheimer’s.

At the midlife survey in 1987, the participants identified themselves as falling into three categories of daily coffee consumption: zero to two cups (low), three to five cups (moderate), and more than five cups (high) per day. The study subjects were also asked about their tea drinking habits and were divided into two groups: those who consumed tea and those who did.

The researchers discovered that people who drank coffee through middle age had the lower risk for dementia and Alzheimer’s. Moderate coffee drinkers saw the greatest reduction in risk – 65 percent. However, tea consumption had no noticeable influence on dementia and Alzheimer’s. Kivepelto claims that, considering the large global consumption of coffee, the results might have important implications for the prevention of or delaying the onset of dementia/AD.

Kivepelto adds that the findings need to be confirmed by other studies but it introduces the possibility that dietary interventions could modify the risk of dementia/AD. Also, identification of mechanisms of how coffee provides protection against dementia might help researchers develop new treatments.

Additional research has discovered that an unknown ingredient in coffee teams up with caffeine to stimulate blood levels of a critical protein called granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (GCSF), which appears to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. The study was conducted at the University of South Florida and published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Since coffee contains many ingredients in addition to caffeine, the researchers wondered if any of these might also provide benefits against Alzheimer’s disease, and set out to compare the effect of caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee on cytokines in the bloodstream of mice with that of only caffeine. Cytokines are proteins that carry signals between cells and their breakdown plays a crucial role in the progression and development of Alzheimer’s

They discovered that both mice genetically engineered to be prone to Alzheimer’s and in the non-genetically engineered littermates, increased total consumption of caffeinated coffee greatly increased blood levels of three cytokines: GCSF, IL-10, and IL-6.

However, caffeine alone nor decaffeinated coffee had this same effect, suggesting that another unidentified ingredient in coffee teamed up with the caffeine to boost these three cytokines in the mice’s bloodstream. The researchers zeroed in on GCSF because after a long period of coffee consumption, Alzheimer’s susceptible mice showed greater performance in working memory, and GCSF was the only cytokine to show increased levels in the bloodstream during the same period.

The researchers concluded that coffee may be the best source of caffeine to protect against Alzheimer’s Disease because a compound in coffee synergizes with caffeine to boost levels of GCSF, resulting in a greater resistance in the onset of Alzheimer’s.