Caffeine consumption reduces skin cancer risk

Rowena Ryan

Rowena is a freelance writer who combines her love of writing with her passion for health care. Rowena explores current issues, trends and research to help consumers and professionals make educated choices.
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A recent study published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research has found that increasing the number of caffeinated cups of coffee in your diet could lower your risk of developing the most common type of skin cancer, basal cell carcinoma.

“Our data indicate that the more caffeinated coffee you consume, the lower your risk of developing basal cell carcinoma,” said Jiali Han, Ph.D., associate professor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston and Harvard School of Public Health.

Han and his colleagues gathered their results by conducting a prospective analysis of data from the Nurses’ Health Study, a large and long-running study to aid in the investigation of factors influencing women’s health, and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, an analogous study for men.

Of the 112,897 participants included in the analyses, 22,786 developed basal cell carcinoma during the more than 20 years of follow-up in the two studies. An association was observed between coffee consumption and a decreased risk of basal cell carcinoma. Similarly, this association was evident in the intake of caffeine from all dietary sources including coffee, tea, cola and chocolate. Decaffeinated coffee however was not associated with a decreased risk of basal cell carcinoma.

“These results really suggest that it is the caffeine in coffee that is responsible for the decreased risk of basal cell carcinoma associated with increasing coffee consumption,” said Han. “This would be consistent with published mouse data, which indicate caffeine can block skin tumor formation. However, more studies in different population cohorts and additional mechanistic studies will be needed before we can say this definitively.”

These findings are significant as basal cell carcinoma is the most commonly diagnosed form of skin cancer in the United States. Even though it is slow-growing, it causes considerable morbidity and places a burden on health care systems.

“Given the large number of newly diagnosed cases, daily dietary changes having any protective effect may have an impact on public health,” said Han.

This article was repurposed from the journal Cancer:

Fengju Song, Abrar A. Qureshi, and Jiali Han. Increased Caffeine Intake Is Associated with Reduced Risk of Basal Cell Carcinoma of the Skin. Cancer Res, July 1, 2012 72:3282-3289; http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/72/13/3282