Caffeine, equivalent to six to eight cups of coffee consumed by a human in a day, could possibly help protect people against multiple sclerosis (MS); a study on mice has shown.

Researchers at Cornell University showed that giving mice the equivalent of six to eight cups of coffee a day protected them against experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), the animal model of MS.

It is known that caffeine is a popular adenosine receptor blocker and the findings show that this molecule plays a vital role in permitting the infiltration of immune cells into the central nervous system of patients with MS.

Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease of the central nervous system (CNS) that occurs when the body's immune system attacks and damages nerves in the brain and spinal cord. While the infiltration of immune cells into brain and other CNS tissue is a rare sight in healthy individuals without MS, the researchers are sure that the molecule adenosine is responsible for this infiltration.

Adenosine is widely present in the body and is vital to many biochemical processes, like energy transfer and the promotion of sleep and suppression of arousal.

Initial studies led the researchers to discover that mice lacking CD73, the enzyme necessary for synthesizing extracellular adenosine, were protected from developing the mouse form of MS (experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis or EAE). Subsequent studies dealing with immune cells from such mice made them believe that normal CD73's ability to synthesize extracellular adenosine governed the development and progression of the MS-like disease.