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Cancer & Tumors

Probabilistic Multiple-Bias Modeling Applied to the Canadian Data From the Interphone Study of Mobile Phone Use and Risk of Glioma, Meningioma, Acoustic Neuroma, and Parotid Gland Tumors.

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Momoli F, Siemiatycki J, McBride ML, Parent MÉ, Richardson L, Bedard D, Platt R, Vrijheid M, Cardis E, Krewski D. · 2017

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Heavy mobile phone users showed double the glioma risk even after correcting for study biases that typically weaken such associations.

Plain English Summary

Summary written for general audiences

Canadian researchers re-analyzed data from the large Interphone study to see if mobile phone use increases brain tumor risk, using advanced statistical methods to correct for study biases. They found that people with the heaviest phone use (more than 558 lifetime hours) had roughly double the risk of developing glioma, the most common malignant brain tumor. Even after accounting for potential errors in how people remembered their phone use and who participated in the study, this increased risk remained significant.

Study Details

We undertook a re-analysis of the Canadian data from the 13-country case-control Interphone Study (2001–2004), in which researchers evaluated the associations of mobile phone use with the risks of brain, acoustic neuroma, and parotid gland tumors.

We applied a probabilistic multiple-bias model to address possible biases simultaneously, using vali...

For glioma, when comparing those in the highest quartile of use (>558 lifetime hours) to those who w...

Adjustments for selection and recall biases did not materially affect interpretation in our results from Canadian data.

Cite This Study
Momoli F, Siemiatycki J, McBride ML, Parent MÉ, Richardson L, Bedard D, Platt R, Vrijheid M, Cardis E, Krewski D. (2017). Probabilistic Multiple-Bias Modeling Applied to the Canadian Data From the Interphone Study of Mobile Phone Use and Risk of Glioma, Meningioma, Acoustic Neuroma, and Parotid Gland Tumors. Am J Epidemiol. 186(7):885-893, 2017.
Show BibTeX
@article{f_2017_probabilistic_multiplebias_modeling_applied_3509,
  author = {Momoli F and Siemiatycki J and McBride ML and Parent MÉ and Richardson L and Bedard D and Platt R and Vrijheid M and Cardis E and Krewski D.},
  title = {Probabilistic Multiple-Bias Modeling Applied to the Canadian Data From the Interphone Study of Mobile Phone Use and Risk of Glioma, Meningioma, Acoustic Neuroma, and Parotid Gland Tumors.},
  year = {2017},
  
  url = {https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5860390/},
}

Quick Questions About This Study

Yes, the Canadian Interphone analysis found that people with more than 558 lifetime hours of mobile phone use had double the risk of developing glioma, the most common malignant brain tumor. This increased risk remained significant even after correcting for study biases.
The study found increased glioma risk in people with more than 558 lifetime hours of mobile phone use. This represents the highest quartile of users in the Canadian data, showing roughly double the risk compared to non-regular users.
No, adjusting for selection and recall biases did not materially change the results. The increased glioma risk in heavy phone users remained significant, with the odds ratio actually increasing slightly from 2.0 to 2.2 after bias corrections.
No, the Canadian Interphone analysis found little evidence that mobile phone use increases the risk of meningioma, acoustic neuroma, or parotid gland tumors. The increased risk was specific to glioma, the most aggressive brain tumor type.
The Canadian Interphone study specifically tested this concern using advanced statistical methods to correct for recall bias. Even after accounting for potential errors in how patients remembered their phone use, the glioma risk findings remained unchanged.