Drinking coffee may cut the risk of the most common form of skin cancer, according to experts in the US.

The most common form of skin cancer, basal cell carcinoma, is the form of skin cancer most commonly diagnosed.

Researchers in the US analysed over 112,800 people. Of these, 22,786 developed basal cell carcinoma over 20 years.

The results of the study showed that coffee consumption was strongly linked to a reduced risk of basal cell carcinoma.

Interestingly, an intake of caffeine from all dietary sources, including coffee, tea, cola and chocolate, was linked to a lowered risk of developing basal cell carcinoma. However, consumption of decaffeinated coffee had no effect on the development of skin cancer.

In contrast to the findings for basal cell carcinoma, neither coffee consumption nor caffeine intake were associated with the two other forms of skin cancer, squamous cell carcinoma and melanoma, the most deadly form of the disease.

Only 1,953 cases of squamous cell carcinoma and 741 cases of melanoma were recorded among the 112,897 participants included in study.

"Our data indicate that the more caffeinated coffee you consume, the lower your risk of developing basal cell carcinoma," said Prof Jiali Han, from Harvard Medical School in Boston and Harvard School of Public Health.

"I would not recommend increasing your coffee intake based on these data alone," he said. "However, our results add basal cell carcinoma to a list of conditions for which risk is decreased with increasing coffee consumption.This list includes conditions with serious negative health consequences such as type 2 diabetes and Parkinson's disease."

"Given the large number of newly diagnosed cases, daily dietary changes having any protective effect may have an impact on public health," said Han.

"These results really suggest that it is the caffeine in coffee that is responsible for the decreased risk of basal cell carcinoma associated with increasing coffee consumption," he said.

The data reviewed by Prof Han and his colleagues was taken from the Nurses' Health Study, a large and long-running study to aid in the investigation of factors influencing women's health, and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study.

The study was published in study published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.