Caffeine may ward off Parkinson’s

From New Orleans, at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience

Call it Starbucks science. Two new studies provide a potential explanation for how coffee may protect the brain from the ravages of Parkinson’s disease, an illness that produces speech and coordination difficulties.

Hints that coffee has some protective value against the disease, which kills nerve cells that make the brain chemical dopamine, emerged in several recent epidemiological studies.