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Researchers have just stumbled on the fact that caffeine in mice has proven to get rid of sun damaged skin cells before they become dangerous. Before you get too excited about this to justify your morning cup of coffee, let’s delve into it a little more deeply. After all, according to some, caffeine is the worlds most prevalent drug!

However, researchers are finding that the presence of caffeine is giving the mice they are testing, a better shot at getting rid of damaged skin cells over-exposed to sunlight! From several types of experiments the researchers have done, the caffeine can selectively kill those damaged cells.

When skin is exposed to even moderate amounts of sunlight, there is damage and most of it is repaired very quickly. But, some cells are too damaged to be repaired and they are killed before they can cause any problems. It appears, at least in these mice, the rate of skin cancer caused by sun damage can be decreased.

Here is how it works. A team of researchers exposed hairless mice to a medium dose of ultra-violet light. Afterwards, one group had a solution put on the skin that contained caffeine while a control group had a solution applied without caffeine. As a further control, other mice received the caffeine or non-caffeine treatments without any ultra violet light exposure. The amount of caffeine is sililiar to the caffeine already present in anti-cellulite creams, about one percent. The Doctor spear heading the team said that the results more than doubled the number of these damaged cells that were deleted…and that also correlated with fewer changes, long-term changes, such as wrinkling.

This doctor wrote in the journal, “Cancer Research” that caffeine appears to inhibit a protein called ATR. This protein helps make sure that a cell’s DNA is copied correctly. If it’s inhibited, normal cells are okay but cancer cells are selectively killed. This, is a very good thing!

Bear in mind, the research thus far is just in mice. No one should head to the beach with their favorite coffee in tow for sunscreen. The next step in the research will be to work with mice that are genetically predisposed to skin cancers to see if they are responsive to the caffeine.

The purpose of this doctor’s research is not about finding a cure for sun induced wrinkling but is fundamental research about the cell cycle in cancer. That means he hopes to find even better cancer inhibitors than caffeine, but, his team also wants to study if this could be useful in humans directly as caffeine. One way that could be interesting is to utilize caffeine as a sunscreen agent. Caffeine itself has the capacity to block ultra violet rays and could be incorporated into sun screens.

According to the doctor, this discovery was an accident which had its origins in research into the health properties of green tea. As far back as 2001 it was being said that the importance of green tea was the caffeine. While exploring this, they stumbled on the caffeine-ATR connection. They reported their finding in the April 2008 issue of the “Cancer Research” journal.

So, if coffee or tea is near and dear to you, it may be proven in the near future, that some good benefit could be derived from drinking it. Guess we’ll just have to wait for further research before claiming caffeine is a “health” drink!