MbShea@PWP@English@UMCP

ABSTRACT: With over a billion worldwide consumers, our relatively poor understanding of caffeine’s potential benefits and risks seems potentially dangerous. In particular, we still have a lot to learn about caffeine’s effects on memory and its effects with prolonged usage. Some existing research shows caffeine’s positive effects for short-term memory and slowing age-related cognitive declines. Even fewer studies have explored caffeine in relation to long-term memory. In one study, researchers surveyed subjects on their coffee and tea consumption habits, assessing their long-term memory capabilities. They state that their findings are muddled by lifestyle and other factors, which are common issues when studying human behavior. Our study seeks to rule out many of these factors by working in a mouse model and ensuring that our experiment’s time span can capture changes in long-term memory. As such, we will first observe how habitual caffeine consumption affects long-term memory in mice and then test the reversibility of its effects over a total of 48 weeks. In the first 24 weeks, we will treat mice with 4.5 mg/kg caffeine injections daily to assess the habitual caffeine consumption effects. In the latter 24 weeks, we will study the reversibility of this effect by withdrawing caffeine and giving all mice saline injections. We will assess long-term memory throughout using maze completion tasks and periodic PET scans of the mice. We expect the results to reflect improved long-term memory in habitual caffeine consumption mice compared to controls and reversibility following caffeine termination.

WC = 244

READER’S PROFILE: I imagine a reader skeptical of the fact that no long-term studies have been conducted using a mice model since the model, itself, is so common.

READER’S RESPONSE: With the understandably limited amount of information provided by your abstract, I have several questions about the feasibility and parameters of the experiment. Since no long-term studies have been conducted regarding caffeine consumption on a mice model, I was wondering if the life span of a mouse could be an issue to truly test long-term effects and whether or not the results can be applied to humans. If life span is not an issue, what is the life span of a mouse keeping in mind that your experiment runs over 48 weeks? Why did you choose 48 weeks and not a longer time span? I also wonder if I should assume that you obtain newborn mice somehow and begin injection right away. If not, when would you begin injection? If you consider all of this in the rest of your grant, then I applaud you. If not, then I suggest considering these factors.

D -- will these be male mice? Have you read about the new NIH directive moving toward male and female mice?

Ask Dr. Q if you need to address this.