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2007-08-07 13:03:57
By Ishani GanguliMon Aug 6, 4:56 PM ET
Drinking more than three cups of coffee a day helped protect older women
against some age-related memory decline, French researchers said on Monday,
giving women more reason to love the world's most popular stimulant.
Men did not enjoy the same benefit, they said.
"The more coffee one drank, the better the effects seemed to be on (women's)
memory functioning in particular," said Karen Ritchie at the French National
Institute of Medical Research, whose work appears in the journal Neurology.
The researchers followed more than 7,000 men and women in three French cities,
checking their health and mental function and asking them about their current
and past eating and drinking habits, their friends, and their daily activities.
They used this information to sort out the specific role caffeine played in
these women's lives.
They found that women who drank more than three cups of coffee per day, or its
caffeine equivalent in tea, retained more of their verbal and -- to a lesser
extent -- visual memories over four years.
These women had a 33 percent lower odds of having verbal memory declines and 18
percent lower odds of having visual and spatial memory declines, compared to
women who drank one cup or fewer per day.
The effect also depended on age, with women over 80 reaping more benefits from
these beverages than those who were 10 to 15 years younger, Ritchie's team
wrote. It was unclear whether current or former coffee consumption made the
difference.
Some studies in mice have suggested that caffeine might block the buildup of
proteins that lead to mental decline.
Ritchie is not sure why only women benefited in her study.
"Our best guess is that women don't metabolize coffee in the same way (as
men)," she said in a telephone interview.
Ritchie plans to follow the women longer to see if caffeine delays the onset of
dementia -- the mental confusion that signals Alzheimer's disease and other
brain disorders.
She said people should weigh any brain gains derived from caffeine against
other effects of the stimulant, including raised blood pressure.
The average American drinks one to two cups of coffee a day, according to the
National Coffee Association.