The Effect of Caffeine in Elderly Citizen Following Eight Hour Abstinence From Caffeine Containing Drinks & Foods

Herning Hospital

Status and phase

Completed

Phase 4

Conditions

Healthy

Elderly

Treatments

Drug: Caffeine

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT01048515

MBJ-1

Details and patient eligibility

About

The study investigated the effect of caffeine on physical performance in healthy citizens aged over 70 years following eight hours of abstinence from caffeine containing drinks and foods. The main hypothesis was that 6 mg/kg caffeine would improve cycling endurance at 65% of expected maximal heart rate.

Full description

It is well documented that caffeine ingestion increases the endurance of young people exercising at 60%-85% of their maximal oxygen uptake (13;15;47). It also seems to improve endurance as measured by repeated sub-maximal isometric contraction (42), and decreases the rate of perceived exertion during exercise (6;9;46). Typically, doses of approximately 6 mg/kg caffeine were used in these studies.

With a growing number of elderly with a physical active lifestyle and many elderly participating in rehabilitation programs the endurance enhancing effect of caffeine is of increasing interest in this age group. We therefore conducted a study of healthy 75 year old citizens to investigate whether 6 mg/kg caffeine improved physical performance and reduced the perceived effort during work in healthy citizens aged ≥ 70 years. The main hypothesis was that caffeine would improve cycling endurance at 65% of expected maximal heart rate. The study showed that compared to placebo caffeine increased endurance by 25 % (p<0.0001) and isometric sub-maximal strength with 54 % (p<0.0001), reduced perceived exertion after 5 minutes of biking by 11 % (p=0.002), but in 21 of 30 participants there was reduced postural stability (with eyes open). In the above described study participants abstained from caffeine containing drinks and foods for 48 hours prior to each test. Half of the participants reported withdrawal symptoms. Such a long caffeine abstinence period would infer with daily life for many people. We therefore invited the participants from the above study to a repetition of the above study to test whether similar results would be obtained if participants only abstained from caffeine containing drinks and foods for 8 hours prior to each test.

Enrollment

30 patients

Sex

All

Ages

70+ years old

Volunteers

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Healthy elderly individuals aged over 70 years (Primarily those who previously have participated in an identical study with 48 hour caffeine abstinence)

Exclusion criteria

Dementia or invalidating psychiatric disease
General debility, angina, or other diseases that would render participation in the test program impossible
Treatment with beta receptor blocking drugs, calcium-channel blocking drugs, digitalis, or nitroglycerine
Acute disease and injury
Diabetes
Conditions that would contraindicate caffeine ingestion or participation in the test program
Treatment with medication that interacts with caffeine
Ingestion of caffeine containing drinks and foods 8 hours before each session