Glyphosate epidemiology expert panel review: a weight of evidence systematic review of the relationship between glyphosate exposure and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma or multiple myeloma.
We conducted a systematic review of the epidemiologic literature for glyphosate focusing on non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) and multiple myeloma (MM) - two cancers that were the focus of a recent review by an International Agency for Research on Cancer Working Group. Our approach was consistent with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines for systematic reviews. We evaluated each relevant study according to a priori criteria for study quality: adequacy of study size, likelihood of confounding, potential for other biases and adequacy of the statistical analyses. Our evaluation included seven unique studies for NHL and four for MM, all but one of which were case control studies for each cancer. For NHL, the case-control studies were all limited by the potential for recall bias and the lack of adequate multivariate adjustment for multiple pesticide and other farming exposures. Only the Agricultural Health (cohort) Study met our a priori quality standards and this study found no evidence of an association between glyphosate and NHL. For MM, the case control studies shared the same limitations as noted for the NHL case-control studies and, in aggregate, the data were too sparse to enable an informed causal judgment. Overall, our review did not find support in the epidemiologic literature for a causal association between glyphosate and NHL or MM.
a Department of Clinical Epidemiology , Aarhus University , Aarhus , Denmark.
John
0000-0002-6455-9343
J
Acquavella
b EpidStat Institute, Emeritus Professor of Occupational Medicine and Epidemiology, University of Michigan , Ann Arbor , MI , USA.
David
D
Garabrant
c Center for Occupational Biostatistics & Epidemiology, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh , Pittsburgh , PA , USA.
Gary
0000-0002-2509-0490
G
Marsh
d Occupational Epidemiology, University of Birmingham , Birmingham , UK.
Tom
T
Sorahan
e DLW Consulting Services, LLC, University of New Mexico School of Medicine , Albuquerque , NM , USA.
Douglas L
DL
Weed
Glyphosate; multiple myeloma; non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma; systematic reviews