Long-term mobile phone use and brain tumor risk.

Lonn S, Ahlbom A, Hall P, Feychting M

Am J Epidemiol. 161(6):526-535, 2005

Handheld mobile phones were introduced in Sweden during the late 1980s. The purpose of this population-based, case-control study was to test the hypothesis that long-term mobile phone use increases the risk of brain tumors.

The authors identified all cases aged 20-69 years who were diagnosed with glioma or meningioma during 2000-2002 in certain parts of Sweden.

Randomly selected controls were stratified on age, gender, and residential area. Detailed information about mobile phone use was collected from 371 (74%) glioma and 273 (85%) meningioma cases and 674 (71%) controls. For regular mobile phone use, the odds ratio was 0.8 (95% confidence interval: 0.6, 1.0) for glioma and 0.7 (95% confidence interval: 0.5, 0.9) for meningioma. Similar results were found for more than 10 years' duration of mobile phone use.

No risk increase was found for ipsilateral phone use for tumors located in the temporal and parietal lobes. Furthermore, the odds ratio did not increase, regardless of tumor histology, type of phone, and amount of use.

This study includes a large number of long-term mobile phone users, and the authors conclude that the data do not support the hypothesis that mobile phone use is related to an increased risk of glioma or meningioma.