London - Strong coffee might be just what a person needs in a nuclear war, it was reported yesterday. Researchers have found that mice given caffeine were able to survive doses of radiation which would otherwise have killed them.
A team from the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Bombay injected 471 mice with varying amounts of caffeine and then subjected them to a lethal level of radiation, New Scientist magazine said. After 25 days 70 per cent of mice given a dose of 80mg of caffeine per kilogram of body weight were still alive. All 196 mice not given caffeine died.
