Coffee, tea, and chocolate can help to avoid Parkinson’s disease
Parkinson’s disease, though having some genetic forms, is thought to be largely life style-related and since no treatments exist to prevent or slow the disease down, environmental factors are of great interest to scientists. Earlier, in Germany (1) and Sweden, (2) consumption of coffee or caffeine have been shown to lower risk of Parkinson’s disease. However, there were some problems with interpretation of the results: coffee drinking was positively associated with smoking and alcohol consumption (3).
The Harvard School of Public Health followed up 183267 healthy people (free of Parkinson’s disease, cancer or stroke) during 10 years, watching their caffein intake with coffee, tee, chocolate and adjusting the results for age since and smocking since these two were strong risk factors in themselves (3). 288 cases of Parkinson’s disease were registered during this time. Women were more active coffee drinkers: the lower quintiles of caffein intake (taken as the reference point) in their population was 7 times higher than in men’s population.
Every other quintile in men had a lower risk of Parkinson’s disease, however, in women, the highest quintile was not associated with risk decrease – women consuming the largest amounts of caffein have had the same risk as those consuming the least caffein and for some of them the risk increased up to 1.8 times. The average highest caffein intake was 1.3 times higher in women than in men but the authors hesitate contributing the U-shaped of intake/risk curve to this difference and argued that “plausible biological basis for a protective effect of caffeine” should be established before making conclusions.
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Sources
- Hellenbrand W, Seidler A, Robra B-P, et al. Smoking and Parkinson’s disease: a case control study in Germany. Int J Epidemiol 1997; 26: 328-339. Links
- Fall P-A, Frederikson M, Axelson O, Granérus A-K. Nutritional and occupational factors influencing the risk of Parkinson’s disease: a case-control study in southeastern Sweden. Mov Disord 1999; 14: 28-37. Links
- Ascherio A, Zhang SM, Hernán MA, Kawachi I, Colditz GA, Speizer FE, Willett WCProspective study of caffeine consumption and risk of Parkinson’s disease in men and women. Ann Neurol. 2001 Jul;50(1):56-63.