What is caffeinol - and how does it work? | Science
The science behind the newsScience This article is more than 20 years oldWhat is caffeinol - and how does it work?
This article is more than 20 years oldIt sounds like a partygoer's dream: a chemical combination of caffeine and alcohol. But this is no recreational drug - scientists in Texas believe this medicinal version of Irish coffee could be used to treat the effects of strokes.
Strokes happen in one of two ways: a clot forms in an artery in the brain, killing brain cells by starving them of oxygen; or a vessel bursts in the brain, interrupting circulation, with the haem-orrhage damaging delicate brain cells.
Researchers at the University of Texas Medical School are using caffeinol to treat the first type of stroke, which accounts for 86% of all strokes.
Researchers found that brain damage in rats was reduced by up to 80% if caffeinol was given within three hours of a stroke.
But how it works is a mystery. "Normally, alcohol relaxes arteries," Konrad Jamrozik, professor of primary care epidemiology at Imperial College London, says. "Caffeine can sometimes constrict arteries, so that seems a bit paradoxical."
These questions will be answered once the drug goes through clinical trials. So far, 23 stroke patients have been treated with the drug but Jamrozik says a proper trial needs to test a far greater number.
About a quarter of people who suffer a stroke die in the first month. To reliably detect a reduction of 10% in this death rate, around 13,000 patients would need to be studied.
But the research is promising for a field that has stalled in recent years. "We are struggling to find a way of limiting the damage once the stroke occurs," Jamrozik says. "[Clot-busting drugs] made an important advance in the 1980s and are now used worldwide. We have not seen the same leap forward for strokes."
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