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TOPLINE:

Coffee consumption was linked to enhanced executive function compared to nonconsumption in patients with early Parkinson’s disease (PD), a new study showed. However, smoking status showed no independent association with cognitive performance.

METHODOLOGY:

• Researchers enrolled 149 patients with early PD from one hospital in South Korea between 2022 and 2024.
• Patients underwent comprehensive neurologic examination and neuropsychological assessment using the Seoul Neuropsychological Screening Battery.
• On the basis of answers from a semi-structured interview, patients were classified as never, current, or former coffee consumers and smokers. Age at initiation, total number of years of consumption or smoking, and average daily consumption or average smoking intensity were recorded.
• Cognitive performance was compared between coffee drinkers (n = 115) and noncoffee drinkers (n = 34), as well as between smokers (n = 48) and nonsmokers (n = 101), with additional stratified analysis conducted across three coffee consumption groups: nondrinkers, those drinking up to one cup per day, and those drinking more than one cup per day.

TAKEAWAY:

• After adjusting for age, sex, duration of formal education, and BMI, coffee drinkers performed significantly better on the Go-No-Go test, a measure of executive function, compared with noncoffee drinkers (P = .04), but there were no significant between-group differences for other cognitive measures.
• Patients consuming more than one cup of coffee per day performed significantly better on calculation tasks than those consuming one or less cup per day (P = .02) and on the Go-No-Go test compared with noncoffee drinkers (P = .03).
• After adjustment for sex and duration of formal education, no cognitive differences remained statistically significant between smokers and nonsmokers, indicating that smoking status was not independently linked to cognitive performance in early PD, the researchers noted.

IN PRACTICE:

“Our findings suggest that while caffeine may correlate with certain cognitive benefits, these results require cautious interpretation and further validation in independent cohorts,” the investigators wrote.

SOURCE:

This study was led by Hak-Loh Lee, MD, Chonnam National University Hospital, Gwangju, South Korea. It was published online on April 15 in Parkinsonism & Related Disorders.

LIMITATIONS:

The single-center design and clinic-based cohort may have limited generalizability to advanced or community-based populations. The history of consumption of coffee and smoking was based on interviews and may have led to recall errors and misclassification. Unmeasured factors such as depression, sleep disorders, physical activity, and medication effects may have influenced cognitive outcomes.

DISCLOSURES:

This study was funded by the Bio&Medical Technology Development Program of the National Research Foundation, which is funded by the Korean government. The investigators reported having no relevant conflicts of interest.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.