By: Stephanie Pappas
Published: 01/20/2015 04:31 PM EST on LiveScience
Go ahead, enjoy that morning mug. A new study suggests that people who are in the habit of drinking coffee regularly may be protected against malignant melanoma, the leading cause of skin-cancer death in the United States.
People in the study who drank four or more cups of coffee daily were 20 percent less likely to develop malignant melanoma than noncoffee drinkers, according to the study published today (Jan. 20) in JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
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The researchers plan to look for evidence of this protective effect in other groups of people, but Loftfield warns that the research is limited: The scientists had no way of knowing about the sunscreen habits of their respondents, or their skin coloring (lighter-pigmented and freckled people are more prone to melanoma). Nor is it clear what coffee contains that could help save the skin.
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