Researchers have found that several moisturizers are linked to an increased skin cancer risk in hairless mice, but caution that there's no reason for people to panic. Mouse skin is very different from human skin, they say, and the mice also developed a very curable type of cancer called squamous cell carcinoma, not the more lethal melanoma. Lead researcher Allan Conney says the team
discovered the risk while testing a theory that caffeine could prevent skin cancer. "We sort of got into this by accident," Conney said in a telephone interview. "We wanted a safe cream that we could put the caffeine into" [Reuters].
In the study, which was published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology [subscription required], researchers primed the albino mice with prolonged exposure to ultraviolet light, as if they'd been sunbathing for far too long. All of the mice in the experiment grew skin tumors, but those ...
