A hypothesis exists that combines the coffee to a lower risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. It will have to wait for further research to elucidate the question.
We drink it for its stimulant effect, this boost that improves - momentarily - our cognitive performance. But the researchers are interested today in a more unexpected caffeine : it helps protect our brain from Alzheimer's disease. Epidemiological studies have found a posteriori that some ill had consumed 3 times less caffeine than the healthy subjects during the last twenty years. It has also been discovered that the brain lesions typical of the disease were the least likely among consumers of coffee. It is only recently that scientists have started to see, in the animal, the mode of operation of the caffeine.
One of the characteristic signs of Alzheimer's disease is the appearance of amyloid plaques in the brain, that is to say, of the agglomeration of small peptides. It is an enzyme (secretase) that has released these peptides by cutting out small pieces of proteins embedded in the membrane of neurons. Without knowing exactly how, it is known that there is a way to inactivate this enzyme : by blocking the receptors for adenosine (a neuromodulator) present at the surface of neurons.
The caffeine would have two actions that are protective against Alzheimer's
However, this is caffeine molecules - at least in mice. It would slow down the formation of plaques neurotoxic. But caffeine also has a second advantage. By blocking the receptors for adenosine, it enrayerait the phosphorylation of Tau proteins, the ones that cause neuronal damage in persons with Alzheimer's disease. However, it is precisely the phosphorylation makes these proteins are toxic to our neurons... These experiences must be confirmed by human clinical trials. With the key, maybe, new medicines