Long-Term Caffeine Worsens Symptoms Associated With Alzheimer's Disease

A study published in Frontiers in Pharmacology suggests coffee or caffeine's use as a strategy to prevent dementia may at a certain point have the opposite effect, reports EurekAlert . The researchers performed the study with normal aging mice and familial Alzheimer's models. "The mice ... not only exhibit the typical cognitive problems but also a number of Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia (BPSD)-like symptoms, so it is a valuable model to address whether the benefits of caffeine will be able to compensate its putative negative effects," says Raquel Baeta-Corral with the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) in Spain. The results of the study indicated that caffeine changes the behavior of healthy mice and exacerbates the neuropsychiatric symptoms of mice with Alzheimer's disease. The team found significant effects in the majority of variables studies, particularly in relation to neophobia, or a fear of everything new, anxiety-related behaviors, and emotional and cognitive flexibility. The increase in neophobia and anxiety-related behaviors worsened the BPSD-like profile in mice with Alzheimer's, while learning and memory derived little benefit from caffeine. "Our observations of adverse caffeine effects in an Alzheimer's disease model together with previous clinical observations suggest that an exacerbation of BPSD-like symptoms may partly interfere with the beneficial cognitive effects of caffeine," says UAB's Lydia Giménez-Llort. "These results are relevant when coffee-derived new potential treatments for dementia are to be devised and tested."