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(Hypertension. 2004;43:724.)
© 2004 American Heart Association, Inc.

Editorial Commentaries

Effect of Caffeine on Blood Pressure Beyond the Laboratory

From Division of Cardiology, Schulich Heart Center, Sunnybrook and Women’s College Health Sciences Center, and Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Correspondence to Dr Martin G. Myers, Sunnybrook and Women’s College Health Sciences Centre, A-202, 2075 Bayview Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M4N 3M5. E-mail martin.myers@sw.ca

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

Caffeine was reported to increase blood pressure 70 years ago.¹ Research into the cardiovascular effects of caffeine entered the modern era with a 1978 publication by Robertson et al,² who noted increases in plasma catecholamines and renin in association with a pressor response to caffeine. In their study, caffeine was administered as a single dose equivalent to 2 to 3 cups of coffee to 9 healthy, non-coffee drinking, young subjects under carefully controlled laboratory conditions. The authors presumably selected caffeine-naive subjects to avoid pharmacological tolerance to caffeine and to maximize its cardiovascular and adrenomedullary actions. This approach was to set the pattern for research on the effects of caffeine on blood pressure over the next 25 years. Despite numerous studies in the intervening period, it is still not certain if caffeine increases blood pressure only under ideal laboratory conditions or if it causes a clinically important pressor response with regular use during usual daily activities.

Much of the controversy surrounding the impact of caffeine on blood pressure derives from the rapid development of tolerance to its effects that appear after only 1 or 2 days of regular consumption.³ Several studies have reported that caffeine is still capable of increasing blood pressure despite regular previous use. However, in some instances, serum caffeine concentrations immediately before ingestion of caffeine in the laboratory were close to 0, suggesting that subjects had not consumed caffeine for at least 24 hours.^4–7 In these experiments, subjects were asked to abstain from caffeine for specific periods (minimum . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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