Sep 09, 2023 18:00:00

It turns out that ``espresso'' eliminates the accumulation of substances that cause Alzheimer's disease

Studies conducted so far have shown that coffee has the effect of preventing dementia. Furthermore, research in Italy, the home of espresso, has shown that espresso, which is made from concentrated coffee beans, has the ability to prevent the accumulation of substances thought to be the cause of Alzheimer's disease, and that it may be the cause of this effect. An active ingredient with a high level of

Espresso Coffee Mitigates the Aggregation and Condensation of Alzheimer′s Associated Tau Protein | Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jafc.3c01072

Espresso Coffee Mitigates Aggregation and Condensation of Alzheimer's Protein in Lab Experiments | Sci.News
https://www.sci.news/medicine/espresso-coffee-aggregation-condensation-alzheimers-protein-12108.html

From Bean to Brain: Lab Tests Show Espresso Can Prevent Alzheimer's Protein Clumping
https://scitechdaily.com/from-bean-to-brain-lab-tests-show-espresso-can-prevent-alzheimers-protein-clumping/

Although the process by which Alzheimer's disease occurs is not completely understood, there is support for the theory that a substance called ``tau protein'' plays an important role.

Tau protein is a substance that helps stabilize brain structure in healthy people. However, when a problem called `` tauopathy '' occurs, in which tauopathy accumulates and aggregates abnormally within nerve cells, the nerve cells die, and this is thought to be the cause of Alzheimer's disease.

Based on this, a research team at the University of Verona, Italy, investigated whether ``espresso,'' a method of brewing coffee that is commonly drunk in Italy and other parts of the world, can prevent the accumulation of tau protein.

For the espresso ingredients used in the experiment, the research team selected a blend of commercially available Arabica coffee beans from South America and Robusta coffee beans from Africa and Southwest Asia, and used an espresso machine to make 80ml of espresso from 15g of ground beans. has been extracted.

Next, the chemical composition of the espresso was analyzed using a method called

nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) , and the main components were identified as caffeine, trigonelline , genistein , and theobromine , so these components were also procured separately and used in the experiment. Did.

They then reacted espresso and each coffee component with tau protein fibers called ``fibrils'' for 40 hours, and found that using high concentrations of espresso, caffeine, and genistein resulted in shorter fibrils. The shortened fibrils are harmless to nerve cells and do not serve as 'seeds' for forming new clumps.

When the research team added tau protein blocks treated with dilute coffee extract (orange frame in the image below) to nerve cells and cultured them for 48 hours, they found that the cells treated without coffee (gray frame) Cell viability increased from 53% to 72% compared to Furthermore, as a result of treatment with strong coffee extract (red frame), the cells became so fine that no aggregates were obtained even after centrifugation, and the survival rate of the cells was further improved.

Some coffee ingredients, such as caffeine, can break through the blood-brain barrier and reach the brain, but this experiment is only preliminary because it does not necessarily act in the same way in the brain as in a test tube. It is said that further research is needed to confirm the effects of coffee and espresso.

At the end of the paper, the research team concludes, ``We have shown a large body of evidence that espresso coffee, which is widely consumed worldwide, is a source of natural compounds that are beneficial in improving tau-related symptoms. This discovery may lead to further research into bioactive substances that can be used to prevent and treat tauopathies.'