Long-term consumption of coffee may worsen Alzheimer's symptoms: Study

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London: Long-term consumption of coffee can worsen the neuropsychiatric symptoms in those suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, scientists claim. It is well known that memory problems are the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease. However, this dementia is also characterised by neuropsychiatric symptoms, which may be strongly present already in the first stages of the disorder.

Known as Behavioural and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia (BPSD), anxiety, apathy, depression, hallucinations, paranoid, and sundowning, are some of the symptoms which are manifested in different manners. They are considered the strongest source of distress for patients and caregivers.

Coffee or caffeine has recently been suggested as a strategy to prevent dementia, both in patients with Alzheimer’s disease and in normal ageing processes, due to its action in blocking molecules - adenosine receptors - which may cause dysfunctions and diseases in old age.

However, there is some evidence that once the cognitive but also the NPS symptoms are developed, caffeine may exert opposite effects. To address these issues, researchers from Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) in Spain and the Karolinska Institutet (KI) in Sweden was conducted with normal ageing mice and familial Alzheimer’s models.

“The mice develop Alzheimer’s disease in a very close manner to the human patients with early-onset form of the disease,” said Raquel Baeta-Corral, from UAB. “They not only exhibit the typical cognitive problems but also a number of 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,” said Baeta-Corral.

“We simulated a long oral treatment with a very low dose of caffeine (0.3 mg/mL) equivalent to three cups for a human coffee-drinker to answer a question which is relevant for patients with Alzheimer’s, but also for the ageing population in general, and that in humans would take years to be solved since we should wait until the patients were aged,” said Bjorn Johansson, researcher at the Karolinska University Hospital.

The research was conducted from the onset of the disease up to more advanced stages, as well as in healthy age-matched mice. The results indicate that caffeine alters the behaviour of healthy mice and worsens the neuropsychiatric symptoms of mice with Alzheimer’s disease.

The researchers discovered significant effects in the majority of variables studies, especially in relation to neophobia, a fear of everything new, anxiety-related behaviours, and emotional and cognitive flexibility. In mice with Alzheimer’s disease, the increase in neophobia and anxiety-related behaviours exacerbates their BPSD-like profile. Learning and memory, strongly influenced by anxiety, got 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,” said Lydia Gimenez-Llort, researcher from UAB.

“These results are relevant when coffee-derived new potential treatments for dementia are to be devised and tested,” said Gimenez-Llort.