The results of a recent study show

May 18, 2010 14:00 GMT  ·  By

A recently conducted study on the connection between the use of mobile phones and cancer shows that there might not be a link between the two in the end, at least not when two main types of brain cancer, namely glioma and meningioma, are involved. The researchers found that the regular use of mobile phones might actually reduce the risk of glioma or meningioma by around 20 percent, though some argue that the results are not as accurate as expected.

The study was an international collaboration called INTERPHONE, run by the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, part of World Health Organization. 13 individual countries collaborating in the study provided results, and the combination of these was published in a paper in the International Journal of Epidemiology. The study involved 2,708 people with glioma, 2,409 with meningioma and 7,658 matched controls.

This was a case-control study, in which people were interviewed about their regular mobile phone usage habits. The information was correlated with data from interviewed people without these types of cancer. What the study found does not exclude a connection between the use of a mobile phone on a regular basis and cancer, “[o]verall, no increase in risk of glioma or meningioma was observed with use of mobile phones.”

Moreover, it seems that the regular phone use is likely to decrease the risk of cancer. However, 10 percent of the participants reporting the greatest amount of time spent on their cell phones showed a 40 percent increase in risk of glioma. Even so, the study suggests that these associations are doubtful. On the other hand, Anthony Swerdlow, an epidemiologist at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, involved in the study in the UK, says that the results show problems that were inherent in the study design.

“We have evidence that the people who refused to be controls are people who didn't use phones,” Swerdlow stated, according to Nature. This suggests that the control group, which included people without cancer, only appeared to use mobile phones more than those with cancer. “The controls were over-represented with phone users,” Swerdlow adds. Even so, it seems that the total number of brain tumors has not increased since mobile phones began being used massively, which might suggest that the two are not directly linked, though the actual question hasn't been fully answered.