New research has indicated that a combination of exercise and caffeine may help the body to protect itself from skin cancer.

A team from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, reported that adding caffeine to a workout regime resulted in the increased destruction of precancerous cells, which had been created through being damaged by ultraviolet-B radiation from the sun.

Australia has the highest rates of skin cancer in the world. It is the most common form of cancer in Australia, with half of Australians developing a skin cancer at some point in their lives. 75 per cent of these cancers are basal cell carcinomas which are the least dangerous type of skin cancer.

Tests carried out on mice found that both exercise and caffeine independently resulted in a protective effect. When the two were combined, this effect was found to increase. Study spokesperson Dr Allan Conney from Rutgers cancer research laboratory said, ‘We think it likely that this will extrapolate to humans, but that has to be tested’.

The mice were exposed to ultraviolet-B light, causing some cells to become pre-cancerous. Damaged, pre-cancerous cells are programmed to self-destruct in a process called apoptosis, but some cells do not do this. The researchers separated hairless mice into four groups of caffeine, exercise, caffeine and exercise, and a control group which partook in neither.

Whereas the mice that drank caffeine displayed a 95 per cent increase in apoptosis in damaged cells and the exercising group showed a 120 per cent increase, the dual group displayed a huge 400 per cent increase.

‘The most dramatic and obvious difference between the groups came from the caffeine-drinking runners, a difference that can likely be attributed to some kind of synergy,’ reported Conney, although he admitted that the reason for the effects was not entirely clear. ‘We need to dig deeper into how the combination of caffeine and exercise is exerting its influence at the cellular and molecular levels, identifying the underlying mechanisms. With an understanding of these mechanisms we can then take this to the next level, going beyond mice in the lab to human trials,’ he said.