[redoubt]

Medical engineer here; I would suggest anyone whoms interest was caught by the title to read the Discussion, not Abstract. The authors have made good use of the section to broaden their conclusions, answering some of the questions I've observed in this thread.

For anyone starting to second-guess their relationship to sleep and caffeine; do note that this is a small-sample study and that more research is needed before any conclusions can be drawn with regards to the population at large.

EDIT: I'm not a medical professional (i.e a Doctor), I'm simply an engineer with domain knowledge in medicine. I am accustomed to reading studies like this. If anyone needs help interpreting the study, I'm happy to assist.

[iosguyryan]

To pile on: it’s in Scientific Reports. Not high impact, not highest quality. It’s a 9 day in lab study on mystery taste lab brew coffee (whose brewing was deemed so insignificant to a coffee study that its brew recipe was excluded from the methods section). These sort of setups are useful from a “help me isolate some test cases” point of view, but is obviously as much a perturbation in participants natural lives that it might even outweigh the impact of drinking coffee. Further, it draws conclusions from an acute 5 day caffeine exposure, whereas in real life these participants relationships and adaptations to caffeine are built over a long period of time. The power of the study is small and not scoped for conclusions, but rather pointing to an area of interest for further funding.

[bovermyer]

Thank you for this. I am not anywhere near to a medical professional and can't interpret these results correctly, I'm sure. It's good to have an experienced perspective.

[redoubt]

I'm happy you found it helpful, medical studies don't pop up all too frequently here at HN so I try to assist when confusion arises.