Coffee lovers may have one more reason to drink an extra cup of their favorite nectar.

When elderly mice programmed to develop Alzheimer's disease symptoms are given caffeine - the equivalent of 5 cups of coffee a day - their memory problems are reduced, according to a study conducted by the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center in Florida, USA.

Studies published on the Alzheimer's Disease Journal website show that caffeine significantly decreases abnormal levels of Alzheimer's disease-related protein in both brain and blood in mice with symptoms of the disease. The studies built on previous research by the Florida-based CCRA group showing that caffeine given in early adulthood prevented the development of memory problems in mice programmed to develop Alzheimer's symptoms in old age.

"These new findings provide strong evidence that caffeine could be a possible treatment for Alzheimer's disease, not just a preventive strategy," said Professor Gary Arendash, PhD, a neuroscientist at CCRA Florida, who led the research.
"This is important, because caffeine is a substance that is safe for most people, easily enters the brain, and seems to directly affect the disease process."

Based on these promising findings in mice, the researchers want to begin human trials as soon as possible to see if caffeine can be effective in people with mild cognitive impairment or in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. The research group has already established that caffeine given to elderly humans without dementia rapidly affects their blood levels of β-amyloid, just as it did in mice (groups of proteins found in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases are called "beta-amyloid"). Caffeine therefore rapidly reduces the beta -amyloid protein in the blood, and its effect is felt in the brain.

The Florida Research Center team has been interested in the potential of caffeine to treat Alzheimer's disease for many years, following a Portuguese study that reported that people with Alzheimer's disease had consumed less caffeine over the past 20 years than people without neurodegenerative disease.

Studies with mice, highly controlled studies, allowed researchers to isolate the effects of caffeine on memory (versus other factors such as diet and exercise). These studies were carried out on 55 transgenic mice, altered to develop, as they age, memory problems identical to those of Alzheimer's. After conducting behavioral tests that confirmed that the mice did have memory problems at 18 or 19 months of age (roughly equivalent to 70 years in human age), the researchers divided the group in two: one half of the mice received caffeinated water and the other half received pure water. Mice with Alzheimer's were given the equivalent of 5 cups of coffee per day, or 500 miligrams of caffeine, which is equivalent to 2 cups of strong coffee or 14 cups of tea.

At the end of the two-month study, mice given caffeine performed significantly better on tests measuring memory and thinking skills. In fact, their memory was identical to that of mice of the same age without dementia. On the other hand, mice that were given only water continued to perform very poorly on these same tests. Moreover, the brains of the "caffeinated" mice showed a reduction of almost 50% in the level of beta amyloid. Caffeine seems to restore memory by reducing the enzymes necessary for the production of beta -amyloid.

Since caffeine improved the memory of mice with Alzheimer's disease, the researchers wanted to know if it could improve the memory of non-demented (normal) mice that were given caffeine from early adulthood to old age. But this was not the case. Mice drinking pure water or water with caffeine had the same performance when not demented. This means that caffeine does not increase performance in "normal" subjects, but it is effective in subjects destined to develop Alzheimer's disease.

If human studies confirm these data, the benefit of this discovery will be very significant. Alzheimer's affects nearly half of Americans 85 years and older. It affects nearly 1 million people in France. Remember that Alzheimer's disease was one of the key themes of the 19th World Congress on Gerontology and Geriatrics, which met July 5-9, 2009, in Paris.

A nice hope for research, anyway, thanks to a daily substance.
A nice, simple way to fight the disease.

Five coffees a day!