Trigonelline in coffee: new hope for anti-aging

Author: Duan Yuechu

As people age, their muscle mass and strength gradually decline, a phenomenon known as sarcopenia, which seriously affects their quality of life. Although there is currently no drug that can prevent or treat sarcopenia caused by aging, diet and nutritional supplements can help reduce muscle loss. Recently, a study published in Nature Metabolism, a subsidiary of Nature, found that trigonelline, a natural alkaloid in coffee beans, plays an important role in enhancing muscle strength and reducing sarcopenia in the elderly.

There are two hallmark events in the occurrence of sarcopenia: one is mitochondrial dysfunction, which can be simply understood as insufficient production of the factory responsible for producing energy in muscle cells; the other is a decrease in the level of a coenzyme molecule called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) in cells. This molecule plays a key role in energy metabolism and directly and indirectly affects many cell functions. Studies have shown that trigonelline is actually a NAD+ precursor molecule, and in the case of sarcopenia, the level of trigonelline is related to NAD+ levels, muscle function, and mitochondrial metabolism.

The researchers analyzed blood samples from patients with sarcopenia through targeted metabolomics and found that several other common NAD+ precursor molecules did not change significantly in patients with sarcopenia, but the concentration of trigonelline in the patient's blood circulation was significantly lower. In animal experiments, the researchers confirmed that supplementing trigonelline can improve mitochondrial function, improve muscle atrophy that occurs with aging, and enhance muscle strength in elderly male mice.

It is worth noting that in addition to helping maintain muscle health, other studies have found that trigonelline helps maintain the function of nerve cells and can even improve animal memory and spatial learning ability. Considering that muscles and brains tend to decline with aging, supplementing with trigonelline may be able to fight aging in many ways.

However, can middle-aged and elderly people replenish trigonelline and avoid sarcopenia by drinking more coffee? Studies have shown that the amount of daily coffee intake does not seem to be associated with the level of trigonelline in the patient's body, but the intake of folic acid and dietary fiber is related to the level of trigonelline in the body. The researchers analyzed that this may be because the metabolism of intestinal flora can also produce trigonelline, and there is a complex relationship between diet, intestinal flora and muscle health, which needs to be further clarified by subsequent studies.