Lagorio & Roosli new study - Mobile phone use and risk of intracranial tumors: A consistency analysis

Lagorio & Roosli new study - Mobile phone use and risk of intracranial tumors: A consistency analysis

Susanna Lagorio wrote with Paolo Vecchia an article against the cell phone court case in Italy. Martin Roolsi reported to IARC: "Martin Röösli receives research funding for studies on adverse health effects of mobile phone use from Forschungsstiftung Mobilfunk, a non-profit-making research foundation at the ETH Zürich. Neither industry, nor NGOs are represented on the Scientific Board of the Foundation. He also serves as a Member on the Board of this foundation".

But this is in fact funded by the mobile phone industry: "Funded researchers"-   Prof. Dr. Martin Röösli

www.emf.ethz.ch/archive/english/personen_e.htm 

Sponsors:

http://www.emf.ethz.ch/archive/english/sponsoring_e.htm

Report by Dr. Joel M. Moskowitz:

Mobile phone use and risk of intracranial tumors: A consistency analysis

Susanna Lagorio and Martin Röösli. Mobile phone use and risk of intracranial tumors: A consistency analysis. Bioelectromagnetics. Article first published online: 6 NOV 2013 | DOI: 10.1002/bem.21829.

Abstract

A meta-analysis of studies on intracranial tumors and mobile phone use published by the end of 2012 was performed to evaluate the overall consistency of findings, assess the sensitivity of results to changes in the dataset, and try to detect the sources of between-study heterogeneity. Twenty-nine papers met our inclusion criteria. These papers reported on 47 eligible studies (17 on glioma, 15 on meningioma, 15 on acoustic neuroma), consisting of either primary investigations or pooled analyses. Five combinations of non-overlapping studies per outcome were identified. The combined relative risks (cRRs) in long-term mobile phone users (≥10 years) ranged between 0.98 (0.75–1.28) and 1.11 (0.86–1.44) for meningioma, with little heterogeneity across studies. High heterogeneity was detected across estimates of glioma and acoustic neuroma risk in long term users, with cRRs ranging between 1.19 (95% CI 0.86–1.64) and 1.40 (0.96–2.04), and from 1.14 (0.65–1.99) to 1.33 (0.65–2.73), respectively. A meta-regression of primary studies showed that the methodological differences embedded in the variable “study-group” explained most of the overall heterogeneity in results. Summary risk estimates based on heterogeneous findings should not be over-interpreted. Overall, the results of our study detract from the hypothesis that mobile phone use affects the occurrence of intracranial tumors. However, reproducibility (or lack of) is just one clue in the critical appraisal of epidemiological evidence. Based on other considerations, such as the limited knowledge currently available on risk beyond 15 years from first exposure, or following mobile phone use started in childhood, the pursuance of epidemiological surveillance is warranted.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bem.21829/abstract

Excerpts

"The major limit of our study, as of any meta-analysis of observational epidemiological studies,mirrors its strength: it is focused on the assessment of consistency, not of reliability of available empiricalfindings. To address the reliability issue a different approach is needed, to apply to each primary study (validity of the measures of effect and estimatedamount and direction of possible bias and errors), and to the overall epidemiologic evidence (external coherence, experimental support, biological plausibility)."

"... all available estimates of the association between mobile phone use and incidence of intracranial tumors are likely affected, to varying extent, by exposure measurement errors, selection bias, and confounding (including reverse causation, a particular kind of non-random confounding"

[My comment: My colleagues and I (Myung et al., 2009) conducted a similar meta-analysis, and we examined the quality of the research studies; thus, this is not beyond the scope of a meta-analysis.

Furthermore, we found that research quality makes a huge difference in the study outcomes in our review of the mobile phone - brain tumor case-control studies. Namely, studies with high quality research methods demonstrated significantly increased brain tumor risk especially for longer term followups. Studies with low quality research methods demonstrated significantly lower brain tumor risk which was likely artifactual due to methodologic biases.]