Mobile phone use and brain tumour risk – COSMOS, a prospective cohort study

Researchers from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and partners have delivered the most recent results of the Cohort Study of Mobile Phone Use and Health (COSMOS) project, which investigates the potential long-term health effects related to the use of wireless communication technologies. The latest findings of this prospective cohort study indicate that people with the most total hours of mobile phone calls do not have a higher risk of developing a brain tumour compared with light users of mobile phones.

The COSMOS project includes data related to more than 250 000 users of mobile phones, many of whom had 15 or more years of regular mobile phone use before being enrolled in the study. The participants answered detailed questions about their mobile phone use and were then followed up through cancer registries for a median of more than 7 years to record any newly diagnosed brain tumours (glioma, meningioma, or acoustic neuroma).

The occurrence of brain tumours among the 10% of participants with the largest total number of hours of mobile phone calls during their lifetime did not differ from the occurrence in participants who used mobile phones significantly less. These findings suggest that mobile phone use is not associated with increased risk of developing these tumours.

The COSMOS project is a joint project of Karolinska Institutet (Sweden), Imperial College London (United Kingdom; joint lead), the Danish Cancer Institute (Denmark), the Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences of Utrecht University (The Netherlands), Tampere University (Finland), and IARC.

Feychting M, Schüz J, Toledano MB, Vermeulen R, Auvinen A, Poulsen AH, et al.
Mobile phone use and brain tumour risk – COSMOS, a prospective cohort study
Environ Int, Published online 2 March 2024;
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2024.108552

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