SynthesisNeurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology2017
Mobile phone use and risk of brain tumours: a systematic review of association between study quality, source of funding, and research outcomes.
Synthesis in Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 72 citations in OpenAlex.
- Risk of Accidents or Chronic Disorders From Improper Use of Mobile Phones: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2022Pooled it
- Cellular Phone Use and Risk of Tumors: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Pooled it
- Non-ionizing radiation and cancer: A review on current evidence, mechanistic insights, and public health implications.Biochemistry and biophysics reports · 2026Review
- The WHO-commissioned systematic reviews on health effects of radiofrequency radiation provide no assurance of safety.Environmental health : a global access science source · 2025Review
- A scoping review and evidence map of radiofrequency field exposure and genotoxicity: assessingFrontiers in public health · 2025Article
- U.S. policy on wireless technologies and public health protection: regulatory gaps and proposed reforms.Frontiers in public health · 2025Review
- Epidemiological criteria for causation applied to human health harms from RF-EMF exposure: Bradford Hill revisited.Frontiers in public health · 2025Review
- Deciphering the causal landscape: genetic insights into sporadic vestibular schwannoma risk factors through Mendelian Randomization.Discover oncology · 2024Article
- Disease burden, risk factors, and trends of primary central nervous system (CNS) cancer: A global study of registries data.Neuro-oncology · 2023Article
- Impressions of the chronic 900-MHz electromagnetic field in the prenatal period on Purkinje cells in male rat pup cerebella: is it worth mentioning?Revista da Associacao Medica Brasileira (1992) · 2022Article
- A Brain Tumor Image Segmentation Method Based on Quantum Entanglement and Wormhole Behaved Particle Swarm Optimization.Frontiers in medicine · 2022Article
- The effect of exposure to radiofrequency fields on cancer risk in the general and working population: A protocol for a systematic review of human observational studies.Environment international · 2021Article
- Reply to Brzozek et al. Comment on "Choi et al. Cellular Phone Use and Risk of Tumors: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Behavioral changes and gene profile alterations after chronic 1,950-MHz radiofrequency exposure: An observation in C57BL/6 mice.Brain and behavior · 2020Article
- Microwaves from mobile phone induce reactive oxygen species but not DNA damage, preleukemic fusion genes and apoptosis in hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Evaluation of the Validity of a Nonlinear J-Shaped Dose-Response Relationship in Cancers Induced by Exposure to Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields.Journal of biomedical physics & engineering · 2019Article
- News on the journal Neurological Sciences in 2017.Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2018Article
- Use of cell phones and brain tumors: a true association?Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2017Article
- Health effects of Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields (RF EMF).Industrial healthArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Mobile phones emit electromagnetic radiations that are classified as possibly carcinogenic to humans. Evidence for increased risk for brain tumours accumulated in parallel by epidemiologic investigations remains controversial. This paper aims to investigate whether methodological quality of studies and source of funding can explain the variation in results. PubMed and Cochrane CENTRAL searches were conducted from 1966 to December 2016, which was supplemented with relevant articles identified in the references. Twenty-two case control studies were included for systematic review. Meta-analysis of 14 case-control studies showed practically no increase in risk of brain tumour [OR 1.03 (95% CI 0.92-1.14)]. However, for mobile phone use of 10 years or longer (or >1640 h), the overall result of the meta-analysis showed a significant 1.33 times increase in risk. The summary estimate of government funded as well as phone industry funded studies showed 1.07 times increase in odds which was not significant, while mixed funded studies did not show any increase in risk of brain tumour. Metaregression analysis indicated that the association was significantly associated with methodological study quality (p < 0.019, 95% CI 0.009-0.09). Relationship between source of funding and log OR for each study was not statistically significant (p < 0.32, 95% CI 0.036-0.010). We found evidence linking mobile phone use and risk of brain tumours especially in long-term users (≥10 years). Studies with higher quality showed a trend towards high risk of brain tumour, while lower quality showed a trend towards lower risk/protection.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.