Coffee lowers skin cancer risk

Washington, July 2: Increasing the number of cups of coffee you drink daily could lower your risk of developing the most common form of skin cancer, a new study has claimed.

Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital of Harvard Medical School at Boston in the US found that people who drank more cups of caffeinated coffee had a reduced risk of developing basal cell carcinoma, a common form of skin cancer which causes considerable morbidity despite being a slow-grower. research.

“I would not recommend increasing your coffee intake based on these data alone. However, our results add basal cell carcinoma to a list of conditions for which risk is decreased with increasing coffee consumption. The list includes conditions with serious negative health consequences such as type-2 diabetes and Parkinson’s disease,” said Han.

The study was published in the journal Cancer Research.

Of the over 1.12 lakh participants included by Han and his colleagues in the analyses, 22,786 developed basal cell carcinoma during the more than 20 years of follow-up in the two studies. An inverse association was observed between all coffee consumption and risk of basal cell carcinoma. Similarly, an inverse association was seen between intake of caffeine from all dietary sources (coffee, tea, cola and chocolate) and risk of basal cell carcinoma. However, consumption of decaffeinated coffee was not associated with a decreased risk of basal cell carcinoma. — PTI