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CNN Live Today

More Benefits to Morning Coffee Than Just Getting You Up

Aired August 27, 2002 - 10:22   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: There may be more benefits to that morning cup of joe than just getting you up and running. Researchers at Rutgers University say lab mice rubbed down with caffeine-spiked lotion developed fewer skin tumors than untreated mice. They got similar results when they used a compound found in green tea.
CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us from New York to talk about more about these findings, the pros and the cons of caffeine consumption.

So I don't know, Sanjay, what does this mean? We have got to rub our coffee on ourselves before we hit the road?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: There are pros and cons like you said, Carol. We have known about caffeine for quite sometime and what it can do in terms of inhibiting, stopping that is, the growth of tumors. If you drink enough of it, green tea, black tea, drinks with caffeine in it, you can actually slow down the growth rate.

The problem is that, really, it was unfeasible to drink as much as you needed to do to drink to actually have a significant effect. So smart researches, as you pointed out, Carol, actually said, well, what if we actually take this and rub it on the body in an acetone solution. They mix the caffeine with acetone to get it to stick the skin in these mice. And what they found was that mice that had been exposed to bad type of UV radiation, UVB radiation, for quite sometime, were likely to develop tumors, had a 44 percent reduction in the nonmalignant -- that is the benign type of tumors -- and a 72 percent reduction in the bad tumors, the malignant tumors if they were exposed, that is the skin was exposed, to caffeine after the exposure to it sun light.

So it was almost like a morning-after sort of cream. You would actually rub it on, and increase the chance of developing tumors.

LIN: That's really interesting. When do you think something like this is going to hit the market?

GUPTA: And this is always the bad part about reporting some of these studies in mice. It is hard it say whether it will even hit the market. Mice are different than humans, and a lot of times their bodies are going to respond differently.

Certainly testing in humans is going to be one of the future steps. It will be hard to say whether it will actually work or not. The Good news is just rubbing it on your skin probably doesn't have much in the way of side effects, so it might be something that people do and becomes popular. But the scientific evidence is something we will be waiting on for sometime.

LIN: So would you recommend to people that their coffee cools before they rub it on themselves?

(LAUGHTER)

I would. Thank you so much, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

GUPTA: Good seeing you.

LIN: You, too.

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