Is Coffee, the latest antidote for aging?

You can now stop feeling guilty about the second or third cup of coffee every morning. A new study published in Nature Medicine has shown an inverse association between caffeine intake and age related morbidity and mortality.

An inverse association exist between amount of tea and coffee consumed and long term morbidity has been suggested in many earlier studies, but the mechanism about this cause and effect relationship was not clear.

The study focused on cells of coffee drinker and non-coffee drinker and found that those who consumed high levels of caffeine tend to have lower levels of inflammation.

 Inflammasomes are protein complexes that regulate expression of interleukin-1 (IL-1) family cytokines, and are central to the regulation of a broad variety of inflammatory disease processes, A culprit responsible for many things like aging, cancer, heart disease, Type 2 DM and Alzheimer’s. 

Whole blood gene expression was measured by microarray from blood samples provided by 100 young and old people. They found that as people age they show a higher activity of Inflammasomes genes associated with the production of a circulating inflammatory protein, called interleukin-1β (IL-1-beta). Older people had significantly high levels of this inflammatory protein.

They further sub analyzed the older group, and after controlling for other confounders found out that those people who consumed at least 5 or more cup of coffee per day have the lowest level of inflammation in the body. The other groups with low caffeine intake had elevated oxidative stress, high rates of hypertension and arterial stiffness. They were also more likely to die during the 8 years of follow up of the study participants.

The researchers than isolated the protein, IL-1-beta and injected it into mice. It triggered massive systematic inflammation and arterial stiffness.

They then added IL-1-beta to human immune cells in the lab, followed by adding caffeine into the mix, too. They discovered that caffeine prevented those compounds from producing their inflammatory effects.

“The more caffeine people consumed, the more protected they were against a chronic state of inflammation,” says study author David Furman, consulting associate professor at the Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection at Stanford University. “There was no boundary, apparently.”

"Most of the diseases of aging are not really diseases of aging, per se, but rather diseases of inflammation,” he further added.

The study is important because it traces novel connection between aging and chronic diseases via Inflammasomes. Inflammatory high expressors and the downward spiral towards many chronic diseases awaits further research. But, interestingly high caffeine levels were found to be associated with low expressors and protective against age related morbidity and mortality.

Further studies with large sample size are underway, till then, most of us can continue drinking coffee without feeling guilt over the second or third cup in the morning. 

Access the abstract in Nature Medicine here.

Access the Editorial published in Science Translational Medicine here.