Authored By:
Schüz et alThe UK Million Women Study is a prospective cohort study examining the association between mobile phone use and brain tumours in women. The study initially recruited 1.3 million women born from 1935 to 1950. Between 2001 and 2013, 776 156 women completed surveys on their mobile phone use every 3-5 years. Of these, 489 769 women reported using a mobile phone. The study found no overall increase in the risk of brain tumours in women using mobile phones compared to women that never used one (risk ratio 0.97, 95% confidence interval = 0.90 to 1.04). Furthermore, the study also found no risk of brain tumours among mobile phone users when assessed by brain tumour subtype, different levels of mobile phone use or duration of use for at least 10 years. The authors concluded that the use of mobile phones does not increase the risk of brain tumours in women.
Published In:
Journal of the National Cancer InstituteThe results of this study are consistent with the results of a similar study and the only other prospective cohort study that has examined the association between mobile phones use and brain cancers, the Nationwide Danish cohort study. The Danish study divided the entire adult population of Denmark aged 30 and older into two groups - those who had a mobile phone subscription between 1990 and 2007, and those who didn’t. The Danish study reported no association between having a mobile phone subscription and brain tumour risk, even after at least 13 years of subscription. Similar findings were reported by an Australian study (a population-based ecological study) which found no increase in the incidence of brain tumours during 1982 to 2013. During this time there was a large increase in the number of mobile phone subscriptions in Australia (Karipidis et al, 2019).
