Researchers have found that people who drink copious amounts of orange juice or eat a lot of grapefruit could be raising their risk of melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.
In the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the researchers say that grapefruit and oranges contain compounds called furocoumarins and psoralen. Furocoumarins make the skin more sensitive to sunlight, and furocoumarins and psoralen cause melanoma cells to multiply when exposed to ultraviolet light. The team looked at more than 40,000 men participating in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study and more than 60,000 women in the Nurses' Health Study, and found that the risk of melanoma was very low, with fewer than 2 percent ending up with melanoma over the course of 25 years.
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