Association of Coffee Consumption and Striatal Dopamine Transporter Binding in Patients with Parkinson’s Disease and Healthy Controls

Abstract

Abstract Emerging evidence indicates that coffee consumption significantly reduces the risk for developing Parkinson disease (PD). We aimed to investigate the role of chronic coffee consumption in nigrostriatal dopaminergic neurodegeneration using 123I-FP-CIT single photon emission computed tomography. Overall, 138 PD patients and 75 healthy controls (HC) were enrolled from the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative cohort. Demographic, clinical and striatal dopamine transporter (DAT) characteristics were compared across subgroups, including current, ever and never coffee consumers in PD patients and HC, respectively. Furthermore, we included the factors that may have influenced the loss of nigrostriatal dopaminergic neurons in multiple linear regression analyses to identify significant contributing factors to striatal DAT binding in each striatal region. In PD patients, current consumers had significantly lower DAT binding in the bilateral caudate than ever/never consumers. In HC, current consumers had significantly lower DAT binding in the bilateral caudate and right putamen than ever/never consumers. Cups per day were negatively correlated with the left caudate DAT binding in current consumers of PD patients. In addition, multiple linear regression analyses showed current coffee consumption remained as an independent predictor of a decrease in striatal DAT binding. Striatal DAT downregulation caused by chronic effects of caffeine may provide evidence for the favorable implication of caffeine to PD pathologies. Furthermore, our study firstly suggests that the chronic effects of caffeine on striatal DAT may fade and disappear after quitting coffee.