Clinical presentation of young people (10–24 years old) with brain tumors: results from the international MOBI-Kids study

"Brain tumors (BT) are one of the most common tumor types in young people. In 2018, the estimated age-standardized annual rate for brain and central nervous system (CNS) tumors in high income areas was 2.5 per 100,000 persons below the age of 25 [1]. Incidence of BT has risen during the last decades and it is unclear whether this is due solely to improved diagnostic practices or to a real increase in disease frequency..."

"MOBI-Kids is a multinational case–control study set-up to estimate risk of BTs in relation to electromagnetic felds— mainly Extremely Low Frequency and radiofrequency (RF) felds—exposure from use of mobile communication device. Cases were patients with a first primary benign or malignant BT, diagnosed between the ages of 10 and 24 years, during a 3–4 study period between 2010–2016 (depending on country), and residing in one of the study regions of the participating countries (Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, India, Israel, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, Netherlands, Japan and Korea)."

Clinical presentation of young people (10–24 years old) with brain tumors: results from the international MOBI-Kids study

Angela Zumel-Marne,
Michael Kundi,
[…]
Elisabeth Cardis

Journal of Neuro-Oncology (2020) Cite this article
Open Access
Published: 03 March 2020

PDF: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11060-020-03437-4.pdf

Abstract



Introduction

We used data from MOBI-Kids, a 14-country international collaborative case–control study of brain tumors (BTs), to study clinical characteristics of the tumors in older children (10 years or older), adolescents and young adults (up to the age of 24).

Methods

Information from clinical records was obtained for 899 BT cases, including signs and symptoms, symptom onset, diagnosis date, tumor type and location.

Results

Overall, 64% of all tumors were low-grade, 76% were neuroepithelial tumors and 62% gliomas. There were more males than females among neuroepithelial and embryonal tumor cases, but more females with meningeal tumors. The most frequent locations were cerebellum (22%) and frontal (16%) lobe. The most frequent symptom was headaches (60%), overall, as well as for gliomas, embryonal and ‘non-neuroepithelial’ tumors; it was convulsions/seizures for neuroepithelial tumors other than glioma, and visual signs and symptoms for meningiomas. A cluster analysis showed that headaches and nausea/vomiting was the only combination of symptoms that exceeded a cutoff of 50%, with a joint occurrence of 67%. Overall, the median time from first symptom to diagnosis was 1.42 months (IQR 0.53–4.80); it exceeded 1 year in 12% of cases, though no particular symptom was associated with exceptionally long or short delays.

Conclusions

This is the largest clinical epidemiology study of BT in young people conducted so far. Many signs and symptoms were identified, dominated by headaches and nausea/vomiting. Diagnosis was generally rapid but in 12% diagnostic delay exceeded 1 year with none of the symptoms been associated with a distinctly long time until diagnosis.

Extracts

Introduction

Brain tumors (BT) are one of the most common tumor types in young people. In 2018, the estimated age-standardized annual rate for brain and central nervous system (CNS) tumors in high income areas was 2.5 per 100,000 persons below the age of 25 [1]. Incidence of BT has risen during the last decades and it is unclear whether this is due solely to improved diagnostic practices or to a real increase in disease frequency [2, 3].

Material and methods

MOBI-Kids is a multinational case–control study set-up to estimate risk of BTs in relation to electromagnetic felds— mainly Extremely Low Frequency and radiofrequency (RF) felds—exposure from use of mobile communication device. Cases were patients with a first primary benign or malignant BT, diagnosed between the ages of 10 and 24 years, during a 3–4 study period between 2010–2016 (depending on country), and residing in one of the study regions of the participating countries (Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, India, Israel, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, Netherlands, Japan and Korea). Eligible tumors were those originating in areas of the brain that absorb the highest RF energy from mobile phones held by the ear, thus excluding midline tumors (those close to the skull base, mostly pituitary and pineal tumors). Tumors known to be associated with a genetic syndrome were also excluded. Ethics committee approvals for the study were obtained from all national and regional review boards. An informed consent was obtained from all participants.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11060-020-03437-4