Maturation of caffeine elimination in infancy.

Abstract

SUMMARY The developmental changes in caffeine elimination were studied in 7 infants aged between 21 weeks and 6 months. Adult plasma clearance rate of caffeine was achieved at 3 to 41 months of age. Plasma half-life and elimination rate reached adult levels after 3 to 41 months and seemed to exceed adult capacity thereafter. No significant changes in apparent volume of distribution were noted. Our data provide some indication of the age in infancy when the low rates of caffeine elimination in the neonate increase to the adult rate.

Effects of discontinuing coffee intake on iron deficient Guatemalan toddlers' cognitive development and sleep

“…One study reported that the alerting effect of coffee lasted between 5.5 and 7.5 h in two different experimental groups [33], which is consistent with the 3 to 5 h half-life of caffeine among adults. Some data suggest that the half-life of caffeine is much longer for pregnant women and for newborns [29]; in infants it decreases gradually with age during the first year to the adults' norm [34]. No studies examining the effects of caffeine on sleep patterns of infants and toddlers were found in the literature.…”

Risk assessment of caffeine among children and adolescents in the Nordic countries

“…In the newborn it is close to 4 days (Aldridge et al 1979;Aranda et al 1979). By the age of 3-4 ½ months, caffeine's half-life in plasma is down to about 14 hours, and is further reduced to 2-3 hours by the age of 5-6 months ).…”

Intake of caffeine and other methylxanthines during pregnancy and risk for adverse effects in pregnant women and their foetuses

“…Around 7% of this 18% would be caffeine. Aranda et al (1979a) and reported slightly lower estimates for caffeine. Since the demethylated metabolites of caffeine possess considerable pharmacological activity (Soyka, 1979;Karlsson et al, 1985), and the newborn may accumulate methyl-xanthines due to the slow metabolism of particularly caffeine, the impact of their ingestion by the newborn following maternal caffeine should be addressed further (Oo et al, 1995).…”

“…The reason for these variations are probably immature, inhibited, or induced biotransformation systems. For references to original articles on this subject, see Aranda et al (1979a), ACSH (1981), von Borstel (1983, Brazier et al (1983), Yesair et al (1984) and . A "normal" concentration of caffeine in tissues of consumers of caffeinecontaining beverages has been found to be in the range 0.2-2 µg/ml (von Borstel, 1983).…”