title: Long-term mobile phone use and the risk of vestibular schwannoma: a Danish nationwide cohort study.
abstract: Vestibular schwannomas grow in the region within the brain where most of the energy by radiofrequency electromagnetic fields from using mobile phones is absorbed. The authors used 2 Danish nationwide cohort studies, one a study of all adult Danes subscribing for a mobile phone in 1995 or earlier and one on sociodemographic factors and cancer risk, and followed subjects included in both cohorts for occurrence of vestibular schwannoma up to 2006 inclusively. In this study including 2.9 million subjects, a long-term mobile phone subscription of ≥11 years was not related to an increased vestibular schwannoma risk in men (relative risk estimate = 0.87, 95% confidence interval: 0.52, 1.46), and no vestibular schwannoma cases among long-term subscribers occurred in women versus 1.6 expected. Vestibular schwannomas did not occur more often on the right side of the head, although the majority of Danes reported holding their mobile phone to the right ear. Vestibular schwannomas in long-term male subscribers were not of larger size than expected. Overall, no evidence was found that mobile phone use is related to the risk of vestibular schwannoma. Because of the usually slow growth of vestibular schwannoma and possible diagnostic delay, further surveillance is indicated.
authors.affiliation: Section of Environment and Radiation, International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France. schuzj@iarc.fr
authors.forename: Joachim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Schüz
authors.forename: Marianne
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Steding-Jessen
authors.forename: Søren
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hansen
authors.forename: Sven-Eric
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Stangerup
authors.forename: Per
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Cayé-Thomasen
authors.forename: Aslak Harbo
authors.initials: AH
authors.lastname: Poulsen
authors.forename: Jørgen H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Olsen
authors.forename: Christoffer
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Johansen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D040421:Cell Phone; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003718:Denmark / Q000453:epidemiology; D004574:Electromagnetic Fields; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009464:Neuroma, Acoustic / Q000453:epidemiology*; D016012:Poisson Distribution; D011159:Population Surveillance; D012306:Risk; D013997:Time Factors