American teen dies after consuming too much caffeine

Everything in excess is bad for you, including your favorite stimulant caffeine.

One high school student in South Carolina, USA, found it out the hard way, as he passed away after consuming too much of the energy-inducing substance, a coroner confirmed.

According to New York Daily News, 16-year-old Davis Allen Cripe was rushed to Palmetto Health Parkridge Hospital after collapsing inside a classroom last April 26.

Upon being examined by Richland County Coroner Gary Watts, the young lad was deemed to have died due to a cardiac event, caused by an excessive amount of caffeine in his body.

“We lost Davis from a totally legal substance,” Watts was quoted as saying in the report. “It was so much caffeine at the time of his death, that it caused his arrhythmia. These drinks can be very dangerous.”

Two hours before he lost consciousness, Cripe reportedly consumed a large diet Mountain Dew, a cafe latte from McDonald’s and some kind of energy drink—which triggered arrhythmia or an irregular heartbeat.

Surprisingly, Watts added that Cripe had no signs of any “unfounded” or “undiagnosed heart condition” whatsoever.

Furthermore, the pathologist explained that a cup of caffeine or soda is highly unlikely to cause a cardiac episode.

However, Cripe’s decision to ingest large quantities in a short time span might have played a huge factor.

When consumed in regulated moderation, caffeine is considered as the world’s most used psychoactive drug due to its ability to alter brain functions such as perception, mode, consciousness and even behavior.  Khristian Ibarrola /ra/rga

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Male and female caffeine consumption ups miscarriage risk—study

WASHINGTON—Women have an increased risk of miscarriage if they or their partner consume more than two caffeinated drinks a day in the weeks leading up to conception, a new US study found.

Women who drink more than two caffeinated beverages per day during the first seven weeks of pregnancy were also more likely to have a miscarriage, according to the study published online late Thursday in the journal Fertility and Sterility.

But rates of miscarriage are reduced for women who take a daily multivitamin before and after conception.

The study, carried out by researchers from the National Institutes of Health and Ohio State University, was based on data from the Longitudinal Investigation of Fertility and the Environment (LIFE) Study.

That study followed 501 couples in Michigan and Texas from 2005 to 2009, examining the relationship between fertility, lifestyle and exposure to chemicals in the environment.

The current study compared cigarette use, caffeinated beverage consumption and multivitamin use among 344 couples when the woman was carrying a single offspring. Of these pregnancies, 98 — or 28 percent — ended in miscarriage.

The researchers’ conclusions were based on a statistical concept called hazard ratio, which estimates the chances of a particular outcome occurring during the study period.

A ratio greater than one indicates increased risk for miscarriage each day following conception, while a ratio less than one indicates reduced daily risk.

The risk of miscarriage was 1.74 when the woman consumed more than two caffeinated drinks a day, the study showed.

However, the risk was almost as high — 1.73 — if the male partner drank that much caffeine or more.

“Our findings also indicate that the male partner matters, too,” said lead author Germaine Buck Louis, director of the Division of Intramural Population Health Research at the NIH. “Male preconception consumption of caffeinated beverages was just as strongly associated with pregnancy loss as females’.”

The study also found that taking a daily multivitamin significantly reduced chances of miscarriage.

Taking a vitamin in the weeks leading up to conception had a hazard ratio of 0.45, a 55 percent reduction in risk for pregnancy loss.

Women who continued to take multivitamins through the early stages of pregnancy had a hazard ratio of 0.21, a risk reduction of 79 percent.

source: technology.inquirer.net

Drinking coffee may lower risk of multiple sclerosis

WASHINGTON - People who drink four to six cups of coffee daily may be less likely to get multiple sclerosis, according to international research out Thursday.

"Caffeine intake has been associated with a reduced risk of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases," said lead author Ellen Mowry of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.

"Our study shows that coffee intake may also protect against MS, supporting the idea that the drug may have protective effects for the brain," she added.

The findings of a US and Swedish study—released ahead of the American Academy of Neurology annual meeting in Washington—each compared more than 1,000 MS patients to a similar number of healthy people.

Researchers tracked how much coffee the subjects drank in the one, five and 10 years before symptoms began for those afflicted with MS.

After accounting for other factors such as age, sex, smoking, body mass index and sun exposure, the Swedish study found that "compared to people who drank at least six cups of coffee per day during the year before symptoms appeared, those who did not drink coffee had about a one and a half times increased risk of developing MS."

Similar protective effects were seen among those who drank lots of coffee five to 10 years before symptoms appeared.

The US study found that "people who didn't drink coffee were also about one and a half times more likely to develop the disease than those who drank four or more cups of coffee per day in the year before symptoms started to develop."

More research is needed to determine if caffeine in coffee has any impact on relapse or long-term disability due to MS, an incurable disease of the central nervous system that affects 2.3 million people worldwide.

The study was funded by the Swedish Medical Research Council, the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Institute on Aging. — Agence France-Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

Study links higher caffeine consumption with lower tinnitus risk

NEW YORK - Tinnitus, an annoying ringing or buzzing in the ears, was less likely to occur in women who consumed the most caffeine, a large study of nurses found.

Tinnitus can happen sporadically, or in some cases may plague a person daily. The cause is unclear, and so is the reason why caffeine would lower one’s risk of developing the condition, researchers say.

But tinnitus treatment guidelines sometimes advise cutting out caffeine, which may have no basis.

“In the ear, nose and throat literature and textbooks they often tell people with tinnitus to avoid caffeine because it can make tinnitus worse, but there really wasn’t great data to even support that,” said the senior author of the new study, Dr. Gary Curhan, of the Channing Division of Network Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Tinnitus affects approximately 50 million Americans, but little is known about risk factors other than exposure to loud noises and that it can be a side effect of certain medications, including aspirin.

Caffeine has long been thought to contribute to the development of tinnitus, but research has been lacking, Curhan and his coauthors write in The American Journal of Medicine.

To assess the relationship, the researchers analyzed data on more than 65,000 women participants in the Nurses’ Health Study II. The women were in their 20s through 40s in 1991 and none had tinnitus at that point. They filled out dietary questionnaires every four years during the study.

In 2009, the participants were asked if they had ringing, roaring or buzzing in their ears during the previous year. The researchers found that 5,289 women reported having those symptoms "a few days a week" or "daily."

On average, the women consumed about 242 milligrams of caffeine per day, which is equal to about three 8-ounce cups of coffee.

“In our study, individuals who had higher caffeine intake, usually in the form of coffee, had a lower risk of subsequently developing tinnitus than those with the lowest intake of caffeine,” Curhan said.

The incidence of tinnitus was 15 percent lower among women who consumed 450 to 599 mg/day of caffeine, equivalent to 6-8 cups of coffee, when compared to the women who consumed less than 150 milligrams per day, equivalent to about a half a cup.

Because coffee was the most common source of caffeine, the researchers also looked at decaffeinated coffee, but didn’t find the same apparent benefit, which suggests the association is only with caffeine, not some other substance in coffee.

The study cannot prove that caffeine protected some women from developing tinnitus, the authors caution, and it doesn’t suggest that people with tinnitus should boost their caffeine consumption to try to treat the condition.

“It was an interesting article. I think it certainly gives us pause to kind of look at things further,” Jennifer Ploch told Reuters Health.

A senior clinical audiologist with the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison, Ploch noted that the study doesn’t try to answer the question of whether increasing caffeine intake makes any difference in people who already have tinnitus.

“That is the $10 million question—could this be something that we look into to that would really help us with our tinnitus patients?” said Ploch, who wasn’t involved in the new study.

As far as prevention of tinnitus, she said there aren’t many recommendations.

“Our general guidelines are if you have significant noise exposure, wearing ear protection and being diligent about your ear protection, is one good preventive measure,” she said. “Aside from protecting your hearing as much as you can, there's not one good preventive measure to avoid it.” — Reuters