Caffeine gives new hope to Alzheimer’s disease

A group of researchers at the University of South Florida conducted two studies that suggested caffeine can significantly decreases abnormal levels of the protein linked to Alzheimer’s disease in the brains and blood of mice with symptoms of the disease.

The two studies where built on past work by scientists at the Florida ADRC where Lead researcher Dr Gary Arendash says caffeine was put in the water of mice that were genetically programmed to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

“After we’d been giving the mice caffeine for two months, we found that their memory had actually returned, that there was a reversal of the memory impairment they had, and quite remarkably the Alzheimer’s pathology in their brain was reduced by about 50 per cent,” he said.

Dr Arendash and his team hope to start human tests soon to assess whether humans experience similar results, Ivanhoe reports.

The team thinks that caffeine has a preventative affect on the production of both the enzymes required to create beta amyloid, the protein which forms destructive clumps in the brains of dementia patients. Those mice fortunate enough to be drugged on caffeine showed up to a 50 percent reduction in the damaging protein.

The new study is published today in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.