In vitro and animal studies suggest that bioactive constituents of coffee and tea may have anticarcinogenic effects against cutaneous melanoma; however, epidemiological evidence is limited to date. We examined the relationships between coffee (total, caffeinated or decaffeinated) and tea consumption and risk of melanoma in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC). EPIC is a multicentre prospective study that enrolled over 500,000 participants aged 25-70 years from ten European countries in 1992-2000. Information on coffee and tea drinking was collected at baseline using validated country-specific dietary questionnaires. We used adjusted Cox proportional hazards regression models to calculate hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) for the associations between coffee and tea consumption and melanoma risk. Overall, 2,712 melanoma cases were identified during a median follow-up of 14.9 years among 476,160 study participants. Consumption of caffeinated coffee was inversely associated with melanoma risk among men (HR for highest quartile of consumption vs. non-consumers 0.31, 95% CI 0.14-0.69) but not among women (HR 0.96, 95% CI 0.62-1.47). There were no statistically significant associations between consumption of decaffeinated coffee or tea and the risk of melanoma among both men and women. The consumption of caffeinated coffee was inversely associated with melanoma risk among men in this large cohort study. Further investigations are warranted to confirm our findings and clarify the possible role of caffeine and other coffee compounds in reducing the risk of melanoma.
To identify common alleles associated with different histotypes of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC), we pooled data from multiple genome-wide genotyping projects totaling 25,509 EOC cases and 40,941 controls. We identified nine new susceptibility loci for different EOC histotypes: six for serous EOC histotypes (3q28, 4q32.3, 8q21.11, 10q24.33, 18q11.2 and 22q12.1), two for mucinous EOC (3q22.3 and 9q31.1) and one for endometrioid EOC (5q12.3). We then performed meta-analysis on the results for high-grade serous ovarian cancer with the results from analysis of 31,448 BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers, including 3,887 mutation carriers with EOC. This identified three additional susceptibility loci at 2q13, 8q24.1 and 12q24.31. Integrated analyses of genes and regulatory biofeatures at each locus predicted candidate susceptibility genes, including OBFC1, a new candidate susceptibility gene for low-grade and borderline serous EOC.