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Study shows more research needed on mobile phone-brain cancer link

'More research needed' is the conclusion of the biggest study to date of the possible links between mobile phone use and brain cancer risk. The INTERPHONE ('International case control studies of cancer in relation to mobile telephone use') study was partly funded by the EU, re...

'More research needed' is the conclusion of the biggest study to date of the possible links between mobile phone use and brain cancer risk. The INTERPHONE ('International case control studies of cancer in relation to mobile telephone use') study was partly funded by the EU, receiving EUR 3.85 million under the 'Quality of life and management of living resources' Programme of the EU's Fifth Framework Programme (FP5). The findings are published in the International Journal of Epidemiology. Launched in 2000, the INTERPHONE study investigated mobile phone use in over 5,000 brain cancer patients in 13 countries worldwide. Some 2,765 glioma patients and 2,425 meningioma patients contributed to the study. Glioma is a type of brain cancer that begins in the glial cells, which surround and support nerve cells, while meningioma affects the meninges, the layers of tissue that protect the brain and spinal cord. For comparison, over 7,000 healthy people (matched for age, sex and region of origin to the cancer patients) were quizzed on their mobile phone use. Despite the immense scale of the study, the results were inconclusive. 'INTERPHONE finds no signs of an increased risk of meningioma among users of mobile telephones,' the paper reads. For glioma, there was a suggestion of an increased cancer risk for those with the highest levels of mobile phone use. 'Still, the evidence for an increased risk of glioma among the highest users was inconclusive, as the increase could be due to one or more [...] possible sources of error,' the researchers note. For example, brain tumours could affect memory, and patients may be 'more motivated to recall and report a publicised potential risk factor for their disease'. 'An increased risk of brain cancer is not established from the data from INTERPHONE,' said Dr Christopher Wild, Director of the World Health Organization's (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which coordinated the INTERPHONE project. 'However, observations at the highest level of cumulative call time and the changing patterns of mobile phone use since the period studied by INTERPHONE, particularly in young people, mean that further investigation of mobile phone use and brain cancer risk is merited.' In an accompanying editorial, Rodolfo Aracci of the Italian National Research Council and Jonathan Samet of the University of Southern California in the US acknowledge that 'most who have been awaiting the results of the INTERPHONE study will be disappointed by its mixed findings'. Nevertheless, they point out that mobile phones did not become common until the mid 1990s, and most cancers in the study were diagnosed between 2000 and 2004. Therefore, many patients in the study had been exposed to mobile phones for less than 10 years. 'None of the today's established carcinogens, including tobacco, could have been firmly identified as increasing risk in the first 10 years or so since first exposure,' Drs Aracci and Samet point out. Furthermore, brain tumours that have been linked to ionising radiation generally occur between 10 and 20 years after the time of first exposure. A major limitation of the INTERPHONE study is the problem of selection and information bias. Drs Aracci and Samet suggest that one way of minimising these biases would be to 'track cohorts of mobile phone users with exposures documented via company records and outcomes ascertained through record linkage with cancer registries'. Drs Aracci and Samet conclude: 'The tired refrain 'more research is needed' fully applies in this instance: without more research the public's question about the acceptability of cancer risk from mobile phones will remain unanswered.' According to the INTERPHONE project coordinator, Professor Elisabeth Cardis of the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology (CREAL) in Barcelona, Spain, 'the INTERPHONE study will continue with additional analyses of mobile phone use and tumours of the acoustic nerve and parotid gland.' Meanwhile, the team is already working on a new project to address the fact that mobile phone use has increased dramatically since the years covered by the INTERPHONE project, especially among children and young people. 'Because of concerns about the rapid increase in mobile phone use in young people - who were not covered by INTERPHONE - CREAL is coordinating a new project, MOBI-KIDS, funded by the European Union, to investigate the risk of brain tumours from mobile phone use in childhood and adolescence,' Professor Cardis said. MOBI-KIDS ('Risk of brain cancer from exposure to radiofrequency fields in childhood and adolescence') has been allocated EUR 3.5 million under the Environment Theme of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

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