Department of Psychological Sciences, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849, USA.
Auburn University Neuroimaging Center, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849, USA.
Nutrients. 2024 Jul 20;16(14):2348. doi: 10.3390/nu16142348.
Earlier laboratory-based evidence has suggested that polyphenol-rich, decaffeinated whole coffee cherry extract (CCE) supports improvements in acute and long-term cognitive performance. To better understand CCE's potential to promote cognitive processing, we conducted a first-of-its-kind remote clinical trial. Participants were randomized into one of two intervention arms: placebo or 200 mg CCE. At the beginning of the study, participants were asked to complete a set of acute cognitive challenges as part of the baseline assessment. Tasks were nearly identical to those used in previous, laboratory-based research. Acute results support that CCE outperformed placebo, reducing omissions and improving accuracy, during working memory and inhibitory control tasks. Long-term results indicate that CCE outperformed placebo on a measure of accuracy. This contributes to the literature in three ways: (1) results improve upon previously reported robust and consistent findings in a real-world setting that a single-dose of CCE acutely improved cognitive performance; (2) results replicate previous laboratory findings but in a real-world setting that long-term CCE supplementation outperformed placebo on measures of accuracy in a working memory task; and (3) it serves as proof of concept of a novel remote clinical trial model that may provide real-world evidence of efficacy while increasing accessibility and cohort diversity.
早期的实验室研究表明,富含多酚、不含咖啡因的全咖啡樱桃提取物(CCE)有助于改善急性和长期认知表现。为了更好地了解 CCE 促进认知加工的潜力,我们进行了首例此类远程临床试验。参与者被随机分为两组干预组之一:安慰剂或 200 毫克 CCE。在研究开始时,参与者被要求完成一组急性认知挑战,作为基线评估的一部分。任务与之前在实验室进行的研究中使用的任务几乎相同。急性结果表明,CCE 在工作记忆和抑制控制任务中表现优于安慰剂,减少了遗漏并提高了准确性。长期结果表明,CCE 在准确性测量方面优于安慰剂。这在三个方面为文献做出了贡献:(1)结果改善了之前在现实环境中报告的一致且稳健的发现,即单次 CCE 剂量可急性改善认知表现;(2)结果复制了之前在实验室中的发现,但在现实环境中,长期 CCE 补充剂在工作记忆任务的准确性测量方面优于安慰剂;(3)它证明了一种新型远程临床试验模型的概念,该模型可能在增加可及性和队列多样性的同时提供疗效的真实世界证据。