Mobile phone use and risk of glioma in adults: case-control
study
(Sarah J Hepworth et al)
20 January 2006
Today’s publication of a UK population-based case-control study
of gliomas in the British Medical Journal is the latest in a series of
studies published as part of internationally coordinated INTERPHONE project¹.
By way of background, gliomas, a type of brain tumour, are relatively
rare. Each year, about 7 are diagnosed for every 100,000 people
in the UK. There are about 4,300 new patients every year. Tumours of
the brain account for 1.6% of all cancers in England and Wales.
In the present large study, the authors reached the following conclusions:
Use of a mobile phone, either in the short or medium term, is not
associated with an increased risk of glioma.
Overall, we found no raised risk of glioma associated with regular
mobile phone use and no association with time since first use,
lifetime years of use, cumulative hours of use, or number of calls.
We note that this result is consistent with most of the previous studies
in this field and the significant body of research reporting no health
risk from using mobile phones.
As already mentioned, this study is part of a 13 country INTERPHONE
project coordinated by the WHO body, the International Agency for Research
into Cancer (IARC). The data from national studies is being published
separately. As these diseases are rare, large numbers of subjects are
needed for accuracy and IARC will follow with an overall or ‘meta’ analysis
involving the combined data from all the countries. Therefore,
it is necessary to wait for the results of the combined analysis which
is expected later this year.
INTERPHONE studies of mobile phone users in Denmark and Sweden have
been published separately and reported no increase in brain tumour among
mobile phone users².
An epidemiological review for the Swedish Radiation Protection Institute
(SSI) in 2002 found no evidence for a causal link between the use of
mobile phones and cancer. The review examined a wide range of exposure
measures, including type of phone, duration of use, frequency of use,
total cumulative hours of use, tumour location and laterality (concurrence
of tumour location with hand normally used during phone conversations).
The mobile phone industry takes all questions regarding the safety of
mobile phones seriously and we have a strong commitment to supporting
ongoing scientific research – such as the INTERPHONE project.
This particular project is being funded by the mobile phone industry
jointly with governments and national health agencies in a way that ensures
the complete scientific independence of the work carried out.
It is also important to note that all mobile phones sold comply with
international health and safety exposure guidelines.
¹.Sarah J
Hepworth, Minouk J Schoemaker, Kenneth R Muir, Anthony J Swerdlow, Martie
JA van Tongeren, Patricia A McKinney, Mobile phone use and risk of glioma
in adults: a UK case-control study, available from: http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/current.shtml
² For Sweden see:
Lönn et al Long-Term Mobile Phone Use and Brain Tumor Risk. American
Journal of Epidemiology, 16:526-535, March 2005 at http://aje.oupjournals.org/ and
for Denmark see Collatz Christensen et al Cellular telephones and risk
for brain tumors: a population-based, incident case-control study. Neurology
64 (7): 1189-1195, 12 April 2005 at http://www.neurology.org/: For SSI
see: Boice and McLaughlin. Epidemiologic studies of cellular telephones
and cancer risk a review. Swedish Radiation Protection Authority
2002 at http://www.ssi.se/english/Press_release_rapp2001_16.html
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