Caffeine Synthesis

treatment. These studies conclude that caffeine can reduce the production of brain βA levels, and can potentially reduce pre-existing brain βA deposits. Another important component to this research is caffeine’s effect on cognitive function. Cognitive improvement with caffeine has been shown by the Adrenash et al. (2010) study. The design of this study was a controlled longitudinal study involving AD transgenic mice. Three groups of mice were used in this study: transgenic AD mice that were given 500 mg caffeine per day (equivalent to 5 cups of coffee for humans), transgenic AD mice that were not given any form of caffeine, and non-transgenic mice. All mice were between the ages of 4 and 9 months, and were subject to behavioral testing during

Further, the transgenic AD mice given caffeine, were at or near the cognitive performance level of non-transgenic, non-AD, control mice, which were being given water. They showed at or near the same results in the domains of spatial learning, reference memory, working memory, and recognition/identification. The authors also studied the effect of caffeine on aged transgenic AD mice, to test weather caffeine treatment has the potential to reduce pre-existing Aβ levels and memory impairment. They studied AD mice already showing these characteristics and administered the same amount of caffeine as they did in the first study. These mice showed poor results in cognitive tests prior to their treatment, and after treatment exhibited a redevelopment of working memory to that of non-AD aged mice. In conjunction with the βA results mentioned earlier from this study, it is concluded that caffeine is protective against AD-like cognitive impairment. The researchers state that these benefits are due to caffeine’s ability to suppress both of the

Chu et al. (2012) studies the effects of crude caffeine vs. pure caffeine on Aβ production to distinguish the specific component in caffeine that may be the cause of lowering beta amyloid plaque production. The design of this study was a longitudinal, open field study of mice. Three groups of mice were used: mice with AD like mutations given caffeine, AD like mice given crude caffeine, and control mice without AD like mutations. All mice were male and were prescribed special diets specific to mice, with their added caffeine as necessary. The mice began their special diets at three months of age, up until the day they were sacrificed for study. The researchers conducted behavioral tests at two months after the study began and two days after the tests were performed, the mice were given anesthetics and saline for sacrifice. Their brains were then cut into, with half of the brain fixed for plaque staining and the other half snap frozen for Aβ measurement. The researchers used multiple tests for behavioral and cognitive analysis. These tests include: a water maze, an open field test, and a rotarod test. Other tests were performed to observe the brain for measurements of Aβ levels, Aβ plaque staining and quantification, primary neuronal cultures, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) assay, and neuronal cell death assay. The