Authored By:
Kim SJ, Ioannides SJ, Elwood JMThis ecological study looked into whether the incidence of brain cancer in New Zealand increased in the 16-year period up to 2010. During that period there were 4,212 cases of malignant brain tumours that were diagnosed in people aged10 years or older. Overall there was a decrease in brain cancer during the period, except in females aged 30-49. There was a statistically significant increase of 2.98% in glioma at ages over 70 in the male group, which the authors suggested to be due to improved diagnostic technologies.
Published In:
Aust N Z J Public Health 2015: in pressAlthough ecological studies are limited in proving whether a certain risk factor causes disease they are useful to rapidly test a hypothesis using existing data sets.
In this study the popular hypothesis on whether mobile phone use is associated with brain cancer is tested in the New Zealand population.The study by Kim et al found an overall decrease in brain cancer incidence. This is not a surprise as many ecological studies done in other developed countries did not find increases in overall incidence of brain cancers, for example studies in Scandinavian countries (reported in December 2009), United States (reported in July 2010), and England (reported in January 2011).
It is however important to note that ecological studies such as the one done by Kim et al is highly unlikely to detect an effect if there is a long latency period with the brain cancer i.e. more than 10 to 15 years (if it were induced by mobile phone use).
