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Caffeine
helps combat
Parkinson’s

ACCORDING TO ISLE
MEDICAL STUDY

As coffee drinking goes up, the
Parkinson's risk appears
to go down

By Helen Altonn
Star-Bulletin

People worried about drinking too much coffee had some good news today from Hawaii researchers.

In a study of 8,006 Japanese-American men that began in 1965, they found that increased coffee-drinking may reduce the risk for Parkinson's disease.

The discovery is reported in this month's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"We found increasing levels of coffee consumption associated with decreasing risk for Parkinson's disease," said the lead author, Dr. G. Webster Ross, staff neurologist at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Honolulu.

"So much so," he added in an interview, "that non-drinkers had five times the risk of Parkinson's disease as individuals who drank 28 ounces or more per day -- about five cups of coffee if you think of a 6-ounce cup."

This doesn't mean people should drink more coffee to prevent Parkinson's disease, Ross said. "This is just a clue that environmental factors alter the likelihood of getting the disease.

More than half a million Americans have Parkinson's, a chronic neurological condition associated with aging. Symptoms include tremors, slowed movement, stiffness, and gait or balance problems.

Ross hopes that information from the Hawaii study can help answer the question: "What effect exactly does caffeine have on brain function and nerve cells in the brain?"

Perhaps caffeine has a pharmacological effect that fights early symptoms of Parkinson's, Ross said. Or possibly it has a protective effect against the nerve-cell destruction that causes the disease.

Understanding how it works could lead to methods of preventing or slowing the disease, he said.

The research group includes Robert D. Abbott, Dr. Helen Petrovitch, Dr. David M. Morens, Andrew Grandinetti, Ko-Hui Tung, Dr. Caroline M. Tanner, Dr. Kamal H. Masaki, Dr. Patricia L. Blanchette, Dr. J. David Curb, Dr. Lon R. White and Dr. Jordan Popper.

They used data from volunteers recruited for the Honolulu Heart Program, which began in 1965 at Kuakini Medical Center.

The study group was followed with examinations and nutritional data in 1971 and those still living -- about 2,400 -- are being examined again. They're now between the ages of 80 and 100.

Ross said the volunteers were asked specifically about caffeinated coffee in 1965. In 1971, they were asked about coffee consumption with no distinction between caffeinated and decaffeinated, so it could have been mixed, he said.

Caffeine from tea, chocolate and beverages had the same effect as coffee in lowering Parkinson's rates, he said.

The average age of men in the study in 1965 was 53, and none had Parkinson's, Ross said. In 1991, there were 92 cases of the disease among the participants and the total now is about 120, he said.

No association with Parkinson's turned up in the Hawaii research between niacin or other nutrients in coffee.

Adjustments were made for cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, hypertension, cholesterol level, calorie intake and saturated-fat level.

David Burge, director of the Spark M. Matsunaga VA Medical & Regional Office Center in Honolulu, said, "It is really exciting that this VA research may ultimately lead to the identification and even eradication of this terrible disease."

The VA, Department of the Army, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Aging and National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute supported the study by Ross' group.