Wide awake at bedtime? Effects of caffeine on sleep and circadian timing in male adolescents – A randomized crossover trial

[Display omitted] Adolescents often suffer from short and mistimed sleep. To counteract the resulting daytime sleepiness they frequently consume caffeine. However, caffeine intake may exaggerate sleep problems by disturbing sleep and circadian timing. In a 28-hour double-blind randomized crossover s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Biochemical pharmacology Vol. 191; p. 114283
Main Authors:	Reichert, Carolin F., Veitz, Simon, Bühler, Miriam, Gruber, Georg, Deuring, Gunnar, Rehm, Sophia S., Rentsch, Katharina, Garbazza, Corrado, Meyer, Martin, Slawik, Helen, Lin, Yu-Shiuan, Weibel, Janine
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Elsevier Inc 01-09-2021
Subjects:	Adolescence Caffeine Circadian Melatonin Sleep Sleepiness Adolescence Melatonin Sleep Circadian Sleepiness Caffeine
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	[Display omitted] Adolescents often suffer from short and mistimed sleep. To counteract the resulting daytime sleepiness they frequently consume caffeine. However, caffeine intake may exaggerate sleep problems by disturbing sleep and circadian timing. In a 28-hour double-blind randomized crossover study, we investigated to what extent caffeine disturbs slow-wave sleep (SWS) and delays circadian timing in teenagers. Following a 6-day ambulatory phase of caffeine abstinence and fixed sleep-wake cycles, 18 male teenagers (14–17 years old) ingested 80 mg caffeine vs. placebo in the laboratory four hours prior to an electro-encephalographically (EEG) recorded nighttime sleep episode. Data were analyzed using both frequentist and Bayesian statistics. The analyses suggest that subjective sleepiness is reduced after caffeine compared to placebo. However, we did not observe a strong caffeine-induced reduction in subjective sleep quality or SWS, but rather a high inter-individual variability in caffeine-induced SWS changes. Exploratory analyses suggest that particularly those individuals with a higher level of SWS during placebo reduced SWS in response to caffeine. Regarding salivary melatonin onsets, caffeine-induced delays were not evident at group level, and only observed in participants exposed to a higher caffeine dose relative to individual bodyweight (i.e., a dose > 1.3 mg/kg). Together, the results suggest that 80 mg caffeine are sufficient to induce alertness at a subjective level. However, particularly teenagers with a strong need for deep sleep might pay for these subjective benefits by a loss of SWS during the night. Thus, caffeine-induced sleep-disruptions might change along with the maturation of sleep need.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-News-1 ObjectType-Feature-3 content type line 23
ISSN:	0006-2952 1873-2968
DOI:	10.1016/j.bcp.2020.114283