Jury still out on link between mobile phones and brain tumours

By Sven Appel Feb 27, 2006, 11:10 GMT

Berlin - 'Mobile phones do not cause cancer.' That is a message that intensive mobile users like to hear, and it is the conclusion of new British research conducted at the Institute of Cancer Research along with several universities.

The experts looked at links between mobile use and the incidence of glioma, the most common kind of tumour found in the head.

In fact the reassuring message is a bit premature.

The British study looked at 966 patients with a glioma tumour over more than three years, alongside a control group numbering 1,716, probing their use of phones.

The team found nothing that indicated that phoning with a mobile increased the risk of suffering a brain tumour, although they did find that the so-called 'Odd Ratio', the probability risk, was slightly increased.

But the increase was statistically insignificant, according to German specialist Frank Gollnick, a biologist and scientific adviser to a research association looking into mobile telephony.

Bernd Rainer Mueller, mobile telephony expert of the German Association for the Environment and Nature Conservation (BUND) sees no reason to doubt the recently released conclusions.

The engineer, who advises local authorities in Germany regarding the siting of relay stations for mobile telephony, nevertheless remains deeply sceptical over how scientists handle the issue of the health effects of using mobile phones.

'Scientific methodology is not selective enough to record and represent the additional burden caused by these electromagnetic fields,' Mueller says.

Gollnick has more confidence in the studies, but he also adds: 'We must be cautious and wait.'

The recently published results are only part of the Interphone study being coordinated by the World Health Organization.

No previous study has covered so many subjects. These include not only a high number of tumour patients, but also many long-term mobile phone users.

The Interphone study, which was launched in October 2000, is the largest of its kind into the possible link between mobile phone use and brain tumours.

In 2004, the results of a partial study conducted in Sweden were released that indicated that mobile phone users did in fact incur a higher risk of an acoustic neurinoma, a growth in the nerves governing hearing and balance.

These growths are seen as benign, but as the conclusion came out of a partial study, experts are reluctant to base too much on them.

The results published thus far within the framework of the Interphone study in general do not suggest any link between the use of mobile phones and the incidence of cancer, Gollnick believes.

But some results are still outstanding, and a final conclusion will be possible only with the publication of the whole international body of work. This is expected by the end of this year.

Apart from the Interphone study, there are various other smaller scale probes underway.

For example in Germany, the mobile network operators have joined forces with the federal government to set up a research programme that looks into the biological effects of electromagnetic fields.

It will be some time, however, before the user receives clear information on the issue.