Synoptic Analysis of Epidemiologic Evidence of Glioma Risk from Mobile Phones

摘要

Concern about brain cancer risks from mobile phone use, in particular of glioma, is mainly based on epidemiologic studies reporting on an increased risk estimate (odds ratio, OR) in particular of long-term and/or heavy users. Concern is enhanced by contradictory results and alarming conclusions from some epidemiologic studies. In a new synoptic approach all reported data from epidemiological studies published since 2001 were analyzed. This approach provided new insight with regard to the suspected link between mobile phone use and glioma. Two quite different data pools could be identified with numerous studies from one single research group opposing all other national and international studies. It could be shown that in spite of puzzling differences of their data pattern, in dependence of the number of exposed cases both data pools exhibit the similar trend of ORs towards reduced glioma risk with increasing statistical power, finally even converging towards a reduced risk, although from either side of the zero-risk line. While in the pooled data a potential long-term risk could be masked by reassuring short-term data the synoptic analysis in dependence of dose surrogates such as cumulated use time, cumulated call time or cumulated number of calls the seemingly increased long-term risk of glioma could be identified as an effect from low statistical power. In spite of worrying differences among some epidemiological studies, overall, the synoptic analysis of the entire body of data supports reassuring rather than alarming conclusions on glioma risks from mobile phone use even in long-term and/or heavy users.