Patients with schizophrenia that start consuming caffeine tend to have it in higher amounts than the general population and there is an association between caffeine and tobacco intake, although this is not related to the symptoms of the disease or the antipsychotic medication dose. These are some of the conclusions contributed by the study Caffeine intake in outpatients with schizophrenia, supervised by the Professor of the University of Granada Manuel Gurpegui Fernández de Legaria and developed on a sample of 250 patients from the Mental Health Centre of El Zaidín, of Cartuja and of the Rehabilitation Unit of Granada. The study, recently published by one of the most prestigious journals on the field, Schizophrenia Bulletin, compares the data extracted in samples of patients with schizophrenia to those published in a study in 1993 based on a general population sample on caffeine consumption in affected with bladder cancer and to those from a survey carried out by the Organization of Consumers and Users (OCU) in 2002 with regard to the intake of this substance by the Spanish population.
The first data reveal that 49% of the analysed patients with schizophrenia consume caffeine frequently, against 60% of general population, a fact that a priori shows that minor proportion of these patients consume caffeine compared to people who do not suffer the disease. However, the results referring to a high intake of these substance (more than 200 milligrams a day) patients of Mental Health Centres of Granada overcome in 11% the general population group. Professor Gurpegui explains these results and points out that the fact that group of patients with schizophrenia consume less caffeine than the rest of the population is basically due to that “most of them live with their family and they are controlled by them, who reduce the intake of this substance. However, those who escape from this family control consume with more intensity, probably because it improves their mood, reinforces them and reduces some of the secondary effects of the medication” (it has been published the case of a patient who even masticated coffee).
Caffeine, tobacco and alcohol
But caffeine is not the only substance analysed by this research team, made up of María del Carmen Aguilar and José María Martínez-Ortega, scholars of the UGR, Francisco Díaz, professor of the University of Medellín and José de León, Visitor Professor of the UGR and director of the Centre for Mental Health Research of the University of Kentucky. The association between tobacco and alcohol intake has been other of the parameters studied on this project, from which derives that the proportion of caffeine consumers who do not smoke or drink represents 30 %, 62 % those who smoke but do not drink and 91% of the patients drink and smoke.
In view of these results, the research work has intended to answer some of the questions of the experts in this sense, such as to what extent the intake of these substances increases the symptomatology of the disease or if the medication is responsible for this caffeine intake to some extent. In both cases, the psychiatrist from Granada answers that there is not an empirical relation between these aspects and caffeine intake, and besides he considers that “this substance is not harmful for the central core of the disease, but can provoke a perturbing effect in the patient or sleep disorders that make him more anxious than usual”.
Reference: Prof Manuel Gurpegui Fernández de Legaria
Dpt. of Legal Medicine, Toxicology and Psychiatry / Institute of Neurosciences
Tel. 958 24 07 04 / 958 24 34 91
E-mail gurpegui@ugr.es
