On Healthy Living

A new animal study suggests that caffeine consumption could help to ward off Multiple Sclerosis. Dr. Linda Thompson, of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, said that giving mice the equivalent of six to eight cups of coffee per day prevented mice from getting the animal model equivalent of MS. Her findings were reported in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

What happens in people with Multiple Sclerosis is that the T-cells from the body’s immune system attack the myelin, the fatty sheath that normally protects the nerve fibers in the central nervous system. This, in turn, produces scar tissue and triggers the symptoms of MS, which can include numbness, weakness, lack of muscle coordination and problems with bladder control, speech and vision.

Thompson’s explanation for how the coffee was able to ward off MS:

“It prevented the molecule adenosine, one of the four building blocks of DNA, from binding to the adenosine receptor at the cellular level. When adenosine cannot bind to receptors at the cellular level, this in turn prevents T-cells from reaching the central nervous system and setting off the events that lead to the animal version of MS.”

The researchers caution that the study is still in the early stages and it needs to be tested on humans to see if these findings are really true.

ff wrote this on July 2nd, 2008 and filed it under Healthy Living |