Coffee: the brain drink?

Coffee Fuels Drive for Drugs for Parkinson’s to Dementia - Bloomberg: "Emboldened by these findings, some companies have been designing drugs to replicate those benefits. The most advanced research has been in Parkinson’s. At least one drugmaker, Kyowa Hakko Kirin Co., won Japanese approval last year for such a product and then began U.S. tests. The challenge is to go beyond the buzz of a vanilla latte to achieve a more powerful effect on the brain -- without side effects like headaches, irritability and jitters.

“Caffeine has a major benefit for cognition,” said Jiang-Fan Chen, a professor of neurology and pharmacology at the Boston University School of Medicine. “More and more people believe this is a real serious potential benefit that we should explore.”

Caffeine, found naturally in more than 60 plants, enters the brain quickly once consumed. There, it latches onto cells at the same sites that interact with adenosine, a chemical that acts as a braking system on the brain. By blocking those sites and thwarting adenosine, it creates the jolt of clarity that makes coffee one of the world’s most popular beverages."



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