Jan 17, 2007
Mobile phone use and risk of glioma in 5 North European countries
Anna Lahkola, Anssi Auvinen, Jani Raitanen, Minouk J. Schoemaker, Helle C. Christensen, Maria Feychting, Christoffer Johansen, Lars Klæboe, Stefan Lönn, Anthony J. Swerdlow, Tore Tynes and Tiina Salminen, in International Journal of Cancer, Published Online: 17 Jan 2007
This study, part of the 13-country Interphone project, is based on data collected in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the U.K., and is a population-based case-control study to investigate the relationship between mobile phone use and risk of glioma among 1,522 glioma patients and 3,301 controls. The results show "no evidence of increased risk of glioma related to regular mobile phone use, no significant association was found across categories with duration of use, years since first use, cumulative number of calls or cumulative hours of use and no increased risks when analogue and digital phones were analyzed separately.
For more than 10 years of mobile phone use reported on the side of the head where the tumor was located, an increased OR of borderline statistical significance (OR = 1.39, 95% CI 1.01, 1.92, p trend 0.04) was found, whereas similar use on the opposite side of the head resulted in an OR of 0.98 (95% CI 0.71, 1.37). The authors conclude that although the overall results do not indicate an increased risk of glioma in relation to mobile phone use, the possible risk in the most heavily exposed part of the brain with long-term use needs to be explored further before firm conclusions can be drawn.
