Cellular Phones, Cordless Phones, and the Risks of Glioma and Meningioma (Interphone Study Group, Germany)

Abstract

The widespread use of cellular telephones has generated concern about possible adverse health effects, particularly brain tumors. In this population-based case-control study carried out in three regions of Germany, all incident cases of glioma and meningioma among patients aged 30-69 years were ascertained during 2000-2003. Controls matched on age, gender, and region were randomly drawn from population registries. In total, 366 glioma cases, 381 meningioma cases, and 1,494 controls were interviewed. Overall use of a cellular phone was not associated with brain tumor risk; the respective odds ratios were 0.98 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.74, 1.29) for glioma and 0.84 (95% CI: 0.62, 1.13) for meningioma. Among persons who had used cellular phones for 10 or more years, increased risk was found for glioma (odds ratio = 2.20, 95% CI: 0.94, 5.11) but not for meningioma (odds ratio = 1.09, 95% CI: 0.35, 3.37). No excess of temporal glioma (p = 0.41) or meningioma (p = 0.43) was observed in cellular phone users as compared with nonusers. Cordless phone use was not related to either glioma risk or meningioma risk. In conclusion, no overall increased risk of glioma or meningioma was observed among these cellular phone users; however, for long-term cellular phone users, results need to be confirmed before firm conclusions can be drawn.

Mobile Phones and Head Tumours: A Critical Analysis of Case-Control Epidemiological Studies

“…The percentage of cases or controls exposed for at least 10 years in the above studies is 0% [16,[18][19][20], less than 5% [21,25,27,28], less than 10% [23,24,26,29], not given [30].…”

“…The editorial of Cardis and Sadetzki takes further the remarks by Saracci and Samet, and leaves little doubt about the relevance of our criticisms, which we document on as follows ( Table 1): • of the 17 Interphone studies [16,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33], fewer than 10% of the exposed cases and controls had completed at least 10 years of cellphone latency or continued use, which means that over 90% had an inadequate exposure time. Since in most of the tumours 95%CI superior limit < 1 for OR<1, and 95%CI inferior limit > 1 for OR>1; 2 ORs decrease together with the increase of exposition and/or latency; n.r.…”

“…These data obviously are barely significant relative to today's intense use of cellphones, especially by those adopting them for work purposes. In Hardell's studies, MP use is reported to be more than 1000 hours for 194 cases and more than 2000 hours for 85 cases over at least 10 years, so that the average use of MPs ranges from over 16 to just more than 32 minutes per day for at least 10 years [1-4]; • in Interphone, the participation of the identified cases or controls in the study is low: 50% [24,30,31], 60% [18,20,28,32,33], 70% [16,19,21,23,25]. In Hardell's studies, participation is always much higher (88-90%) for both cases and controls [1,2]; • owing to the non-blind Interphone protocol, there is often a reduced participation in the study by the nonmobile users initially selected -in particular controls who are not affected by tumours, naturally less interested in the aims of the research than regular users, especially cases affected by tumours -and this represents a further factor of "dilution" of risk estimates.…”

Mobile phone use, exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic field, and brain tumour: a case–control study

“…Four studies from the INTERPHONE study showed no increased overall risk of glioma or meningioma in relation to regular mobile phone use (Christensen et al, 2004(Christensen et al, , 2005Hepworth et al, 2006;Schuz et al, 2006), although glioma risk increased non-significantly (OR ¼ 2.20; 95% CI: 0.94 -5.11) among long-term users (10 years or more), but no excess risk was found for temporal lobe tumours, considered to be exposed to the highest radio frequency (RF) -EMF (Schuz et al, 2006). In a Swedish study, the OR for glioma on the same side as mobile phone use increased to 1.8 (95% CI: 0.8 -3.9) among long-term (X10 years) mobile phone users, but the corresponding OR for glioma on the opposite side was found to decrease to 0.6 (95% CI: 0.3 -1.4) among long-term users (Lönn et al, 2005).…”

“…Since only glial and meningial tissue close to the surface of the head is exposed to relatively high electromagnetic fields (EMFs) emitted from mobile phones, brain tumours, especially glioma and meningioma, have received particular attention, along with acoustic neurinoma and salivary gland tumours. To investigate whether mobile phone users have an increased risk for these tumours, a collaborative case -control study in 13 countries, the INTERPHONE study, was initiated in 2000, coordinated by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and is still underway (Cardis and Kilkenny, 1999;Christensen et al, 2005;Lönn et al, 2005;Hepworth et al, 2006;Schuz et al, 2006;Takebayashi et al, 2006;Cardis et al, 2007;Hours et al, 2007). Some national reports are already published, with mixed findings.…”