Use of mobile phones and progression of glioma incidence in four Nordic countries since 1979

Trends in Brain Tumor Incidence Outside the U.S.
Use of mobile phones and progression of glioma incidence in four Nordic countries since 1979
Electromagnetic Radiation Safety, 2 August 2022

My [Dr. Joel Moscowitz] notes: Although the title of the following report from the WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer is in German, the report is available in English.

The report's summary, "no indications of a detectable effect of mobile phones have been found," seems misleading because it is inconsistent with the report's final conclusion, namely, "An increased risk in the 10% heaviest mobile phone users was an exception to this general situation, as it remained plausible."

The report's bottom line:

"This ecological data is not sufficient to dismiss every potential mobile phone related risk scenario, but suggests that the risk – if it exists - would be very small, only occur after very long latency periods of several decades, or only affect small subgroups within glioma patients."

If only a portion of the population has a genetic susceptibility to brain cancer in the presence of microwave radiation as appears to be the case with thyroid cancer (Luo et al., 2020), that could explain why the odds ratios obtained for brain cancer risk from case-control studies of heavy, long-term mobile phone users over-predict glioma incidence in the overall population based upon tumor registry data.

* Luo J, Li H, Deziel NC, Huang H, Zhao N, Ma S, Nie X, Udelsman R, Zhang Y. Genetic susceptibility may modify the association between cell phone use and thyroid cancer: A population-based case-control study in Connecticut. Environmental Research. 2020 Mar;182:109013. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2019.109013. (see also Thyroid Cancer and Mobile Phone Use)

Deltour I, Schuz J. Nutzung von Mobiltelefonen und Verlauf der Gliom-Inzidenz seit 1979: Vorhaben 3618S00000 (FM 8867). International Agency for Research on Cancer. Jun 2022. 

Open access report: https://doris.bfs.de/jspui/bitstream/urn:nbn:de:0221-2022063033222/4/BfS_2022_3618S00000.pdf

Summary

1.1 Introduction

In the Nordic countries, the sharp increase in the use of mobile phone occurred in the mid-1990s among adults; thus, time trends in glioma incidence rates (IR) may provide information about possible risks associated with mobile phone use. We investigated time trends in IR of glioma, and compared IR and observed number of cases to those that would be expected under a range of hypothetical mobile phone risk scenarios, encompassing risk levels reported in published case-control studies.

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