People with Type 1 Diabetes may have a new reason to appreciate a cup of coffee. Caffeine intake, in normal amounts, is associated with a significant reduction in nighttime episodes of excessively low blood sugar levels - or hypoglycemia - researchers said on Wednesday.

“The fear of nocturnal Hypoglycemia is consistently the greatest fear that patients bring up in clinic,” lead investigator Dr. Tristan Richardson told. “The influence of a common everyday drug such as caffeine on reducing the amount of time with Hypoglycemia, especially at night, is interesting, and has never been suggested before.”

People with type 1 diabetes have to take insulin to keep their blood glucose levels within the normal range. When levels drop too low, patients can become weak and disoriented, and even suffer brain damage and go into a coma.

In the medical journal Diabetes Care, Richardson of Royal Bournemouth Hospital and colleagues note that in previous studies they showed that moderate caffeine intake can boost the normal body responses that occur to correct mild Hypoglycemia.

To investigate further, the researchers conducted a study involving 19 patients with long-standing Type 1 Diabetes.

They were all put on a low-caffeine diet, containing less than 50 mg of caffeine per day. This was supplemented for 2 weeks with either two 250 mg caffeine capsules given twice daily or placebo capsules, and then the participants were switched to the opposite capsules for another 2 weeks.

Continuous glucose sensing was used to measure the subjects’ blood sugar levels for the last 48 hours of each 2-week period.

With the caffeine supplement, the average duration of nighttime Hypoglycemia was 49 minutes. With the placebo supplement, it was 132 minutes, the team found.

“The underlying physiological cause remains unclear,” Dr. Richardson commented. “It may be related to an alteration in non-REM sleep, another well known side-effect of coffee, and this warrants further study.”

However it works, he concluded, “The use of caffeine may be one option worth trying in an attempt to reduce the frequency and length of Hypoglycemia.”

SOURCE: Diabetes Care, June 2005.