Acute caffeine ingestion and exercise performance in women: a systematic review and meta-analysis of menstrual-cycle phase and hormonal contraceptive status.
Zhu Jian J, Zhang Yinghui Y, Li Ming M, Fan Xiaohan X et al.
Acute caffeine ingestion is widely used to enhance exercise performance, but most evidence comes from male or mixed-sex cohorts. Whether menstrual-cycle phase or hormonal contraceptive status modifies caffeine's ergogenic effect in women remains unclear. Six databases were searched for randomized controlled trials examining acute caffeine ingestion and objective exercise performance outcomes in women. Methodological quality and risk of bias were assessed using a modified PEDro scale and RoB 2. Three-level meta-analyses accounted for dependent effect sizes within studies. The primary moderator was reproductive-hormonal status, classified as early follicular, late follicular/peri-ovulatory, luteal/mid-luteal, or hormonal contraceptive/oral contraceptive use. Exploratory analyses examined dose, exercise type, phase verification, timing, and habitual caffeine intake. Twenty studies contributed 144 primary effect sizes. Acute caffeine ingestion improved exercise performance in women overall (Hedges' g = 0.37, 95% CI 0.24 to 0.50), with moderate heterogeneity and a prediction interval crossing the null. Positive estimates were observed across all reproductive-hormonal strata, but there was no clear evidence of between-stratum moderation. The overall effect was robust to outlier exclusion and alternative correlation assumptions. Exploratory analyses suggested that exercise-task phenotype and phase-verification method may partly explain variability in observed effects, whereas dose, timing, and habitual caffeine intake did not support phase-specific prescriptions. Risk-of-bias concerns, sparse subgroup data, and low-to-very-low GRADE certainty limited individualized inference. Acute caffeine ingestion produces a small average ergogenic effect in women, but exploratory findings suggest that its expression may vary by exercise task within different reproductive-hormonal contexts. Current evidence therefore supports a context-sensitive interpretation rather than rigid menstrual-phase- or contraceptive-specific prescriptions. However, given the low-to-very-low certainty of evidence, these findings should be interpreted cautiously and considered hypothesis-generating. Inconsistent phase verification remains a key methodological limitation that may obscure biologically meaningful patterns. Future female-specific trials should combine rigorous hormonal verification, detailed contraceptive profiling, prespecified exercise phenotypes, and mechanistic assessment to refine individualized caffeine guidance.. OSF https://osf.io/5y69g/, identifier 5y69g.