While we wouldn’t necessarily recommend going on a coffee-exclusive diet as the next health trend, there really does seem to be some benefit to drinking your favorite morning brew, as scientists from McMaster University identified some key proteins that caffeine affects, which in turn aid the removal of bad cholesterol from the bloodstream through organs like the liver.
This particular study, published in the journal Nature Communications, was spearheaded by senior author Richard Austin, who’s a McMaster professor of medicine. Together with Austin was a team of researchers who chased how exactly does caffeine fight off cardiovascular disease.
“Coffee and tea drinkers have another important health reason to rejoice – minus the sugar,” said Austin. “These findings now provide the underlying mechanism by which caffeine and its derivatives can mitigate the levels of blood PCSK9 and thereby reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.”
To be precise, Austin and the team found a link between coffee consumption and the reduction of the level of the protein PCSK9 in the bloodstream; this protein, when low, increases the liver’s ability to remove unwanted low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, improving the body’s chances against cardiovascular diseases.
According to the McMaster University press release, caffeine is also part of a group of chemicals that can “block” the activation of the SREBP2 protein, which in turn reduces PCSK9 levels in the bloodstream. The research team describes their find as a “molecular domino effect,” which they say was also spotted back in 2020 when they identified a genetic variant of PCSK9 that led to its reduced release in the bloodstream, leading to the same lower-cholesterol effect. (This earlier study was published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.)
Said co-author and McMaster pathology and molecular medicine professor Guillaume Paré: “These findings have [wide-ranging] implications as they connect this widely consumed, biologically active compound to cholesterol metabolism at a molecular level. This discovery was completely unexpected and shows that ordinary food and drink have many more complex effects than we think.”
Future studies by Austin and the team will involve exploring other health benefits of caffeine beyond its now-known cholesterol-lowering function, as well as exploring the novel field of nutraceutical medicine for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases.
References
- Irving, M. (2022, February 16). Scientists identify how caffeine reduces bad cholesterol. New Atlas. https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/coffee-caffeine-reduce-cholesterol/
- Lebeau, P. F., Byun, J. H., Platko, K., Saliba, P., Sguazzin, M., MacDonald, M. E., Paré, G., Steinberg, G. R., Janssen, L. J., Igdoura, S. A., Tarnopolsky, M. A., Wayne Chen, S. R., Seidah, N. G., Magolan, J., & Austin, R. C. (2022). Caffeine blocks SREBP2-induced hepatic PCSK9 expression to enhance LDLR-mediated cholesterol clearance. Nature Communications, 13(1), 770. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28240-9
- Lebeau, P. F., Wassef, H., Byun, J. H., Platko, K., Ason, B., Jackson, S., Dobroff, J., Shetterly, S., Richards, W. G., Al-Hashimi, A. A., Won, K. D., Mbikay, M., Prat, A., Tang, A., Paré, G., Pasqualini, R., Seidah, N. G., Arap, W., Chrétien, M., & Austin, R. C. (2021). The loss-of-function PCSK9Q152H variant increases ER chaperones GRP78 and GRP94 and protects against liver injury. The Journal of Clinical Investigation, 131(2). https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI128650
- Scientists discover how caffeine protects against cardiovascular disease. (2022, February 10). Brighter World: McMaster University. https://brighterworld.mcmaster.ca/articles/scientists-discover-how-caffeine-protects-against-cardiovascular-disease/
