By David Liu, Ph.D.

Tuesday Oct 25, 2011 (foodconsumer.org) -- A new study presented at the 10th AACR International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research found a link between coffee consumption and risk of basal cell carcinoma (BCC), a common type of non-melanoma skin cancer.

The study did not find any association between coffee drinking and risk of other types of skin cancers like melanoma and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) though.

Fengju Song, Ph.D. at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School analysed data from the  the Nurses’ Health Study  and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study and found the association.

In these two studies, a total of 113,000 men and women were followed for more than 20 years. During the follow-up, identified were 25,480 incident skin cancer cases of which 22,786 were BCC, 1953 were SCC and 741 were melanoma.

To be exact, the researchers found women who had more than three cups of coffee each day were 20 percent less likely to be diagnosed with BCC while men who drank more than three cups a day were nine percent less likely to develop BCC, compared with those who drank less than one cup a month.

Caffeine is known to eliminate UV-damaged keratinocytes via apoptosis or programmed cell death and reduce risk of SCC in animal models.  But no association between coffee drinking and risk of SCC was found in the current study.

The study was observational and does not prove any causal relationship.  No one should try to drink a lot of coffee to reduce the risk of skin cancer, a health observer suggested.

U.V rays are believed to be a major risk factors for BCC.  Could it be possible that people who drank a lot of coffee were less likely to expose themselves less often to the sun?

Skin cancer including squamous cell carcinoma and basal cell carcinoma does not pose a life-threading risk while a small portion of the skin cancer, that is, melanoma, is very aggressive and highly lethal.