Forskning

December 5, 2016

Low, but not high, dose caffeine is a readily available probe for adenosine actions

B B Fredholm et al, 2016. Low, but not high, dose caffeine is a readily available probe for adenosine actions, Mol Aspects Med, published online.

ABSTRACT:

Caffeine is very widely used and knowledge of its mode of action can be used to gain an understanding of basal physiological regulation. This review makes the point that caffeine is – in low doses – an antagonist of adenosine acting at A₁, A_2A and A_2Breceptors. We use published and unpublished data to make the point that high dose effects of caffeine are not only qualitatively different but have a different underlying mechanism. Therefore one must be careful in only using epidemiological or experimental data where rather low doses of caffeine are used to draw conclusions about the physiology and pathophysiology of adenosine.