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posted by janrinok on Friday January 30 2015, @09:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the correllation-is-not-causation-etc dept.

A new National Cancer Institute (NCI) study reveals that drinking four or more cups of joe a day might reduce the risk of melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer.

The fifth most common form of cancer in the U.S., melanoma is diagnosed in some 77,000 people annually, killing 9,500 of them.

And while limiting exposure to the sun is the number one way to decrease your risk, the compounds in coffee have been shown to reduce skin cancer risk in recent lab studies.

Researchers examined more than 447,000 people, ages 50 to 71, who were cancer-free at the start of the ten-year report. By the end, roughly 2,900 developed malignant melanomas. The most hardcore coffee drinkers—people who down four cups a day—saw their risk for melanoma drop by 20%.

While researchers insist the NCI study is not conclusive, coffee has also been linked to a reduced risk of diabetes, depression and Parkinson’s disease.

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  • (Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Friday January 30 2015, @09:23PM

    by cmn32480 (443) <reversethis-{moc.liamg} {ta} {08423nmc}> on Friday January 30 2015, @09:23PM (#139641) Journal

    I measure my intake in pots per day.

    I wonder if there is any correlation between regular/decaf to this study.

    --
    "It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
    • (Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 30 2015, @09:43PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 30 2015, @09:43PM (#139653)

      "This association was statistically significant for caffeinated (≥4 cups/day: HR = 0.75, 95% CI = 0.64 to 0.89, P trend = .01) but not for decaffeinated coffee (P trend = .55)."

      http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/107/2/dju421.full [oxfordjournals.org]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 30 2015, @10:40PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 30 2015, @10:40PM (#139666)

      Pot AND coffee?!?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 31 2015, @03:57AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 31 2015, @03:57AM (#139729)

        Pot butter in coffee. See what you can do Colorado.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by FakeBeldin on Friday January 30 2015, @09:30PM

    by FakeBeldin (3360) on Friday January 30 2015, @09:30PM (#139645) Journal

    I'm curious: would there be something that causes both resistance to melanoma as well as predisposing people towards drinking coffee?
    I've glanced through The Fine Article, but couldn't find much beyond the summary.

    The actual scientific article uses the word "associated", which neatly leaves the ambiguity :)

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Friday January 30 2015, @09:35PM

      by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 30 2015, @09:35PM (#139648) Journal

      They discussed the causative mechanism(that already has experimental evidence) at the basis of the hypothesis. Now the correlation in the natural experiment suggests some validity to the idea, you're still free to reject the notion that "compounds found in coffee have been shown to affect molecular pathways that can reduce the risk for UV-related skin cancer."

      This waffling about correlation and causation only really stands when the causation is not understood.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 30 2015, @09:48PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 30 2015, @09:48PM (#139659)

      "The protective effects of coffee constituents, especially caffeine, on UVB-induced skin cancer demonstrated by murine and cell culture models have been corroborated by epidemiological studies of coffee consumption and risk of nonmelanoma skin cancers. In contrast, the few existent epidemiological studies of coffee consumption and melanoma are marked by inconsistent results"

    • (Score: 2) by jcross on Saturday January 31 2015, @05:42PM

      by jcross (4009) on Saturday January 31 2015, @05:42PM (#139848)

      I haven't read the study to see what they corrected for, but just from consulting stereotypes it seems possible that there's an overlap between the type of people who are heavy coffee drinkers and the type of people who don't go out in the sun much. As I understand it, the big problem with skin cancer studies is it's really hard to quantify people's level of exposure over such a long timespan.

  • (Score: 0) by Zipf on Friday January 30 2015, @09:44PM

    by Zipf (2400) on Friday January 30 2015, @09:44PM (#139654)

    There are a bunch of theoretical health benefits to caffeine.

    It is thought/suspected of being anti-viral, anti-fibroblast, anti-VEGF, anti-PDE, anti-inflammatory, and anti-mTOR, and thus enhancing autophagy.
    I suspect that being anti-mTOR may be why it inhibits some forms of skin cancer.

    It seems that enhanced PI3K/Akt/mTOR activity means less UV-induced apoptosis (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22246168). But -- does cell survival admit the possibility of mutation propagation? Perhaps.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 30 2015, @10:52PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 30 2015, @10:52PM (#139667)

      well, now that I know coffee is against partial differential equations, I will never start drinking it!

      • (Score: 0) by Zipf on Saturday January 31 2015, @04:05AM

        by Zipf (2400) on Saturday January 31 2015, @04:05AM (#139733)

        not sure if serious... [see: Phosphodiesterase]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 31 2015, @05:01AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 31 2015, @05:01AM (#139739)

      Cell survival is basically always good for cancer. The only time it isn't so good is when there is a highly immunogenic epitope present on some of the cells that will promote infiltration of effector cells.

      What does anti-fibroblast mean? I've never heard the term. Do you mean that it inhibits fibroblast differentiation, recruitment, or something else?

      • (Score: 0) by Zipf on Saturday January 31 2015, @06:23AM

        by Zipf (2400) on Saturday January 31 2015, @06:23AM (#139748)

        What does anti-fibroblast mean?

        The term seems to be personal shorthand (I copied from some old notes of mine.) Gist seems legit, however:

        - It inhibits FGF 19 [Styer, 2014 ]
        - Inhibits BC. associated myofibroblasts [Al-Ansari, 2014]
        - "Caffeine reduces collagen synthesis in human cultured skin fibroblasts" [Donejko, 2014]
        - Inhibits viability of gingival fibroblasts [Bozchaloei, 2013]

  • (Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Saturday January 31 2015, @12:28AM

    by SlimmPickens (1056) on Saturday January 31 2015, @12:28AM (#139686)

    They've controlled for everything under the sun (smoking, BMI...) but the coffee was differentiated by being caffeinated or decaf, maybe, and it really was measured in cups. I assume these cups were not double ristretto.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 31 2015, @12:40AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 31 2015, @12:40AM (#139690)

    Is the side effect of a jittery caffeine addiction and loss of time and money from buying and making all that coffee worth the 20% reduced risk?

  • (Score: 2) by ilPapa on Saturday January 31 2015, @02:10AM

    by ilPapa (2366) on Saturday January 31 2015, @02:10AM (#139707) Journal

    I assume this means my coffee enemas will keep me from getting ass cancer.

    To be honest,I don't know if they're going me any good, but they sure are fun!

    --
    You are still welcome on my lawn.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 31 2015, @06:39AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 31 2015, @06:39AM (#139755)

      "Felch Style Coffee"

      Sounds German.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 31 2015, @05:10AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 31 2015, @05:10AM (#139741)

    hop onto http://chat.soylentnews.org/ [soylentnews.org] and pledge your support by typing "coffee++" in #soylent

    you know you wanna!