Coffee protects against Alzheimer's disease

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDJun 30 2011

A new study shows that caffeinated coffee may help keep Alzheimer's disease at bay.

The study appears online in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, was in mice whose DNA had been tweaked to contain a human Alzheimer’s gene. Just like humans with familial Alzheimer’s, these mice become increasingly forgetful as they age. It was seen that the equivalent of four to five cups of caffeinated coffee every few days led to much improved memories in the Alzheimer’s mice, says study co-author Gary Arendash, a scientist at the Florida Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center in Tampa.

Arendash and his colleagues in their earlier studies showed that caffeine could at least partially block the production of beta amyloid, the sticky protein that clogs the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. They also found that a substance called granulocyte-colony stimulating factor, or GCSF, sparked the production of new axons, the communication cables that link nerve cells together, as well as new nerve cells themselves. Caffeinated coffee was seen to boost the production of GCSF.

For this study Arendash and his colleagues “treated” healthy mice and Alzheimer’s mice with either caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee. Then the researchers ran a test to see if either beverage led to better memories. The mice has to find - and remember - the location of a submerged platform in a tub of water that is deep enough that they need to swim till they find the platform. After they find the platform in one tub, they’re moved to another tub where they have to find yet another platform. Mice with Alzheimer’s generally have a tough time remembering the location of the first platform when they’re placed in the original tub. But in Arendash’s study, Alzheimer’s mice that got caffeinated coffee had memories that were just as good as those of normal mice. Arendash added that he is working on humans as well. The data is currently being analyzed, but will also be published soon.

Ministers will pledge to dramatically increase spending on research in the battle against Alzheimer’s. More than 800,000 people suffer from the disease in the UK. But despite this, for every £1 the Government spends on cancer research, it spends just 8p on dementia.  Care services minister Paul Burstow will take the first step to end this imbalance – taking money away from research into diseases such as cancer and putting it towards dementia. Under the plans, the Department of Health will pledge £20million over five years to pay for four new biomedical research units to investigate dementia. The government-funded Medical Research Council plans to increase funding for neurogeneration research by 10 per cent to £150million by 2015.