Recent analysis shows that increasing the number of cups of caffeinated coffee consumed could lower the risk of developing basal cell carcinoma, the most common form of skin cancer.
Jiali Han, PhD, associate professor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston, and Harvard School of Public Health, and colleagues conducted a prospective analysis of data from the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study.
“Our data indicate that the more caffeinated coffee you consume, the lower your risk of developing basal cell carcinoma,” said Han.
The analysis, published in Cancer Research, included 112,897 participants. During the more than 20 years of follow-up in the 2 studies, 22,786 patients developed basal cell carcinoma. Researchers observed an inverse association between all caffeinated coffee intake and risk of basal cell carcinoma. Similarly, an inverse association was present between consumption of caffeine from all dietary sources (coffee, tea, cola, and chocolate) and risk of basal cell carcinoma. Conversely, drinking decaffeinated coffee 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.”
Contrary to the findings for basal cell carcinoma, coffee consumption and caffeine intake were not inversely associated with squamous cell carcinoma and melanoma, the 2 other forms of skin cancer.
Source: AACR.