Caffeinated Soda Intake in Children Is Associated with Neurobehavioral Risk Factors for Substance Misuse

Abstract

Background and objectives

Use of psychotropic substances in childhood has been associated with both impulsivity and other manifestations of poor executive function as well as escalation over time to use of progressively stronger substances. However, how this relationship may start in earlier childhood has not been well explored. Here, we investigated the neurobehavioral correlates of daily caffeinated soda consumption in preadolescent children and examined whether caffeinated soda intake is associated with a higher risk of subsequent alcohol initiation.

Methods

Using Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study data (N = 2,092), we first investigated cross-sectional relationships between frequent caffeinated soda intake and well-known risk factors of substance misuse: impaired working memory, high impulsivity, and aberrant reward processing. We then examined whether caffeinated soda intake at baseline predicts more alcohol sipping at 12 months follow-up using a machine learning algorithm.

Results

Daily consumption of caffeinated soda was cross-sectionally associated with neurobehavioral risk factors for substance misuse such as higher impulsivity scores and lower working memory performance. Furthermore, caffeinated soda intake predicted a 2.04 times greater likelihood of alcohol sipping after 12 months, even after controlling for rates of baseline alcohol sipping rates.

Conclusions

These findings suggest that previous linkages between caffeine and substance use in adolescence also extend to younger initiation, and may stem from core neurocognitive features thought conducive to substance initiation.

Keywords:

• Caffeinated soda
• alcohol sipping
• risk factors of substance use
• impulsivity
• working memory
• ABCD study

Acknowledgements

We thank the families and children who participated, and continue to participate, in the ABCD study, as well as staff at the study sites who are involved in data collection and curating the data release. Data used in the preparation of this article were obtained from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (https://abcdstudy.org), held in the NIMH Data Archive (NDA). This is a multisite, longitudinal study designed to recruit more than 10,000 children age 9-10 and follow them over 10 years into early adulthood. The ABCD Study® is supported by the National Institutes of Health and additional federal partners under award numbers U01DA041048, U01DA050989, U01DA051016, U01DA041022, U01DA051018, U01DA051037, U01DA050987, U01DA041174, U01DA041106, U01DA041117, U01DA041028, U01DA041134, U01DA050988, U01DA051039, U01DA041156, U01DA041025, U01DA041120, U01DA051038, U01DA041148, U01DA041093, U01DA041089, U24DA041123, U24DA041147. A full list of supporters is available at https://abcdstudy.org/federal-partners.html. A listing of participating sites and a complete listing of the study investigators can be found at https://abcdstudy.org/consortium_members/. ABCD consortium investigators designed and implemented the study and/or provided data but did not necessarily participate in analysis or writing of this report. This manuscript reflects the views of the authors and may not reflect the opinions or views of the NIH or ABCD consortium investigators. The ABCD data repository grows and changes over time. The ABCD data used in this report came from [NIMH Data Archive Digital Object Identifier (10.15154/1503209)]. DOIs can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.15154/1503209.

Declaration of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data used in the preparation of this article were obtained from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (https://abcdstudy.org), held in the NIMH Data Archive (NDA). This is a multisite, longitudinal study designed to recruit more than 10,000 children age 9–10 and follow them over 10 years into early adulthood. A listing of participating sites and a complete listing of the study investigators can be found at https://abcdstudy.org/consortium_members/. ABCD consortium investigators designed and implemented the study and/or provided data but did not necessarily participate in analysis or writing of this report. This manuscript reflects the views of the authors and may not reflect the opinions or views of the NIH or ABCD consortium investigators. The ABCD data repository grows and changes over time. The ABCD data used in this report came from [NIMH Data Archive Digital Object Identifier (10.15154/1503209)]. DOIs can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.15154/1503209.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT, & Future Planning (NRF-2018R1C1B3007313 and NRF-2018R1A4A1025891); the Institute for Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No. 2019-0-01367, BabyMind); the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No. 2021M3E5D2A0102249311); and the Creative-Pioneering Researchers Program and the Convergence Research Grant through Seoul National University to W.-Y.A.