Could coffee be the liquid key to longevity?
A new study reports that the world’s most widely used stimulant can extend lifespan and affect how cells respond to genetic damage — though there’s a potential complication.
A team of researchers at Queen Mary University of London confirms that caffeine interacts with the systems that influence aging, DNA response and cellular stress.
The team studied fission yeast, a single-celled organism that is analogous to human cells and uses similar pathways to manage energy, DNA repair and stress.
Researchers measured the response of fission yeast to different forms of cellular stress, including DNA damage, toxic exposure and nutrient deprivation.
Then they added caffeine to gauge how cells would respond.
They found that while caffeine extended the lifespan of yeast, it also affected how cells responded to stress, particularly when the molecular systems that regulate stress were already activated.
The findings were published this week in the journal Microbial Cell.
The research team previously established that caffeine supports the longevity of cells by activating TOR (target of rapamycin), a biological switch that determines when cells should grow based on the availability of food and energy.
According to the team, the TOR switch has been actively controlling energy and stress responses in living things for over 500 million years.
In this latest study, the team learned that caffeine doesn’t directly activate TOR, but rather influences it by activating AMPK, a cellular fuel reserve in yeast and humans.
“When your cells are low on energy, AMPK kicks in to help them cope,” said study senior author Charalampos (Babis) Rallis. “And our results show that caffeine helps flip that switch.”
The yeast model demonstrated that caffeine’s influence on flipping that switch directly impacts how cells grow, repair their DNA and respond to stress — all of which relate to aging.
Quite surprisingly, the team found that rather than protecting damaged DNA, caffeine amplified the damage.
Typically, when a cell detects DNA damage, it stops dividing to repair it. However, researchers found that caffeine overrides this stop, allowing unhealed cells to continue dividing and making them more vulnerable to future damage.
The team assured that this doesn’t make your morning cup inherently dangerous. Caffeine’s ability to alter how cells respond to problems can be positive or negative, depending on the situation.
The team noted that the benefits of caffeine depend on the presence of specific proteins and pathways. The fact that caffeine’s effects are neither universal nor automatic may help explain why previous studies exploring the link between caffeine and improved health have been inconsistent.
“These findings help explain why caffeine might be beneficial for health and longevity,” said John-Patrick Alao, the postdoctoral research scientist leading this study. “And they open up exciting possibilities for future research into how we might trigger these effects more directly — with diet, lifestyle or new medicines.”
The team acknowledged that because the study relied only on fission yeast, the findings may not directly translate to human cells.
Coffee has long been lauded for its health benefits.
Rich in antioxidants, it may enhance brain function. It’s also been shown to increase alertness, aid in weight management, boost mood and potentially lower the risk of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
A 2018 study of nearly half a million British adults found that coffee drinkers had a slightly lower risk of death over 10 years than abstainers.
Other research, encompassing more than 170,000 adults in the UK, proposed that those who drink between two and four daily cups of coffee, regardless of whether they have added sugar, live longer than those who don’t drink coffee.
A 2025 study led by researchers at Tulane University tied a morning brew to lower mortality rates than espresso later in the day.
And three to five cups a day at midlife was associated with a decreased risk of Alzheimer’s disease later in life, research determined.
In addition to Alzheimer’s, some studies found that java junkies have up to a 60% lower risk of Parkinson’s disease.
The more coffee they drank, the lower the risk.
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