DECRYPTION – French researchers show that the drink can silence abnormal movements caused by a rare genetic mutation.
Doctors should always listen to their patients. In this story, it all started with a father and daughter suffering from a rare and debilitating genetic disease causing involuntary movements, ADCY5-related dyskinesia.
Followed at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital (Paris, AP-HP) by P Emmanuel Flamand-Roze, neurologist and Inserm researcher, they tell him during a routine consultation that coffee silences their symptoms; the father in particular never goes to bed without having had a cup, thus ensuring a peaceful night without awakenings linked to untimely movements. The team talks about it to other patients, including an 11-year-old child who is very handicapped in his daily life.
An attractive track
From the first cup appears “a spectacular response after 45 minutes, which lasted 7 hours”write his doctors in 2019 in the Annals of Internal Medicine . But one day, the parasitic movements return. “I tore my hair out trying to figure out what was going on!”