Mar 1, 2006
Cellular Phones, Cordless Phones, and the Risks of Glioma and Meningioma (Interphone Study Group, Germany)
Joachim Schüz, Eva Bohler, Gabriele Berg, Brigitte Schlehofer, Iris Hettinger, Klaus Schlaefer, Jürgen Wahrendorf, Katharina Kunna-Grass, and Maria Blettner, in American Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 163, Issue 6, pp. 512–520, March 2006
Results from a newly published epidemiological study by the Interphone Study Group from Germany indicate that overall mobile phone and cordless phone use do not increase brain tumor risk, in particular gliomas and meningiomas. However, an increased risk of glioma in long-term users (≥ 10 years) was observed. This population-based case-control study included 366 incident glioma cases, 381 meningioma cases, aged 30 to 69 and diagnosed between 2000-2003, and 1494 randomly selected controls matched on gender, age, and defined study regions. Regular mobile phone use did not increase the risk of glioma (OR 0.98, 95% CI 0.74-1.29) or meningioma (OR 0.84, 95% CI 0.62-1.13). However, long-term mobile phone users exhibited a two-fold increase (95% CI 0.94-5.11) for glioma, while no increase was observed for meningioma. Furthermore, there were no observed differences in either glioma or meningioma incidences in the temporal lobe of the brain (the site of highest RF exposure). Since most of the studies conducted so far, including this study, have included a statistically insignificant number of long-term mobile phone users (only 12 cases of glioma in this study), further studies must be conducted to clarify whether long-term mobile phone use increases the risk of brain tumors.
