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Coffee May Cut Melanoma Risk

By Nicholas Bakalar

January 22, 2015 5:30 am

Drinking coffee is associated with a slightly reduced risk for skin cancer, a
new study has found.
Researchers used health and dietary data on 447,357 non-Hispanic whites
ages 50 to 71 who were cancer free at the start of the study and followed them
for an average of 10 years. Over the course of the study, the researchers
identified 2,904 cases of melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer.
The more coffee consumed, the lower the risk. Drinking four or more cups
of coffee was associated with a 20 percent risk reduction compared with those
who drank none. The association did not hold for decaffeinated coffee or for
melanoma in situ, melanoma in its earliest stages that affects only the top
layer of skin.
While the results may be encouraging for coffee drinkers, they do not
indicate that anyone should change their coffee drinking preferences, said the
lead author, Erikka Loftfield, a graduate student at the Yale School of Public
Health. The most important thing a person can do to reduce risk is to reduce
sun and ultraviolet light exposure.
The study, in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, controlled for
age, sex, education, smoking, physical activity, alcohol consumption and other
health, behavioral and genetic factors, but the authors acknowledge that other
unknown variables might help explain the association.

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