Study: Dark Roast Coffee May Offer Protection From Alzheimer's And Parkinson's Disease

UHN recently published a study by Dr. Donald Weaver, Senior Scientist and Research Director of the Krembil Brain Institute focused on the compounds of coffee that may aid the brain in fighting both Alzheimer's And Parkinson's disease. The team screen coffee extracts to determine if the proteins within the coffee inhibited the misfolding process of amyloid-beta (Aβ) and tau, the two primary proteins believed to be involved in Alzheimer's, and α-synuclein, a primary protein involved in Parkinson's. The team identified one and it wasn't caffeine. Instead is was a group of compounds called "phenylindanes," which emerge as a result of the coffee roasting process. The longer the roasting, the more phenylindanes are produced. The result was that both caffeinated dark roast coffee and de-caffeinated dark roast coffee both had almost identical potentiates and inhibition properties, making phenylindanes an important neuroprotective component within coffee.