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Wan LixinOpinion deputy editor of Shanghai Daily
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Research finds bias in cancer studies
Source: Agencies |
October 15, 2009, Thursday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
STUDIES on whether mobile phones can cause cancer, especially brain tumors, vary widely in quality and there may be some bias in those showing the least risk, according to researchers.
So far it is difficult to demonstrate any link, although the best studies suggest some association between mobile phone use and cancer, the team led by Dr Seung-Kwon Myung of South Korea's National Cancer Center found.
Myung and colleagues at Ewha Womans University and Seoul National University Hospital in Seoul and the University of California, Berkeley, examined 23 studies of more than 37,000 people.
They found results often depended on who conducted the study and how well they controlled for bias and other errors.
"We found a large discrepancy in the association between mobile phone use and tumor risk by research groups, which is confounded with the methodological quality of the research," they wrote in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
The use of mobile and cordless phones has exploded in the past 10 years to an estimated 4.6 billion subscribers worldwide, according to the United Nations International Telecommunication Union.
Research has failed to establish any clear link between use of the devices and several kinds of cancer.
The latest study, supported in part by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, examined cases involving brain tumors and others including tumors of the facial nerves, salivary glands and testicles as well as non-Hodgkin's lymphomas.
It found no significant association between the risk of tumors and overall use of mobile phones, including cellular and cordless phones.
Myung's team said eight studies that employed "high quality" methods to blind participants against bias found a mild increased risk of tumors among people who used mobiles compared with those who never or rarely did.
By contrast, studies that used "low quality" methods to weed out bias found mobile users were at lower risk for tumors than people who rarely used the devices.
So far it is difficult to demonstrate any link, although the best studies suggest some association between mobile phone use and cancer, the team led by Dr Seung-Kwon Myung of South Korea's National Cancer Center found.
Myung and colleagues at Ewha Womans University and Seoul National University Hospital in Seoul and the University of California, Berkeley, examined 23 studies of more than 37,000 people.
They found results often depended on who conducted the study and how well they controlled for bias and other errors.
"We found a large discrepancy in the association between mobile phone use and tumor risk by research groups, which is confounded with the methodological quality of the research," they wrote in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
The use of mobile and cordless phones has exploded in the past 10 years to an estimated 4.6 billion subscribers worldwide, according to the United Nations International Telecommunication Union.
Research has failed to establish any clear link between use of the devices and several kinds of cancer.
The latest study, supported in part by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, examined cases involving brain tumors and others including tumors of the facial nerves, salivary glands and testicles as well as non-Hodgkin's lymphomas.
It found no significant association between the risk of tumors and overall use of mobile phones, including cellular and cordless phones.
Myung's team said eight studies that employed "high quality" methods to blind participants against bias found a mild increased risk of tumors among people who used mobiles compared with those who never or rarely did.
By contrast, studies that used "low quality" methods to weed out bias found mobile users were at lower risk for tumors than people who rarely used the devices.
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