Methodological Aspects of Epidemiological Studies on the Use of Mobile Phones and their Association with Brain Tumors

Abstract

Our case-control studies were the first to report an association between the use of mobile or cordless phones and brain tumors; glioma and acoustic neuroma. Criticism of these results has been based partly on results from the Inter- phone studies conducted under the auspice of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Here, we com- pare study design and epidemiological methods used in our studies and the Interphone studies. We conclude that while our results appear sound and reliable, several of the Interphone findings display differential misclassification of exposure due to observational and recall bias, for example, following low participation rates in both cases and controls and bed-side computer guided interviews of cases rather than blinded interviews of cases and controls. However, as we have presented elsewhere, there seems to be a consistent pattern of an association between mobile phone use and ipsilateral glioma and acoustic neuroma using > 10 years latency period.