Abstract

Background: To evaluate the association between mobile/cellular phone use and risk of three intracranial tumors (glioma, meningioma and acoustic neuroma) based on case-control studies through pooling the published data.

Methods: We conducted a systematic literature search in databases including PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library up to September 2021. The primary outcome was the risk of tumors by mobile/cellular phone use, which was measured by pooling each Odds Ratio (OR) and its 95% Confidence Interval (CI). The random- or fixedeffects model was applied to combine the results depending on the heterogeneity of the analysis. And we estimated publication bias using Begg’s and Egger’s test.

Results: We ultimately included 6 articles for glioma, 6 articles for meningioma and 8 for acoustic neuroma from 1999 to 2015. Totally 41478 participants including 13021 cases and 28457 controls were enrolled in the final analysis. There was no significant association between mobile/cellular phone use and risk of glioma (OR, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.81-1.17; I²=76.9%, p=0.001) and acoustic neuroma (OR, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.76-1.25; I²=60.7%, p=0.013). And no statistical significance was observed between any subgroup of duration of use and these two types of cancer. However, mobile phone use was associated with decrease the risk of meningioma, especially when the time since first use was between 0-5 years (OR, 0.83; 95% CI, 0.76-0.90; I²=39.5%, p=0.142) and 5-10 years (OR, 0.83; 95% CI, 0.75-0.93; I²=32.3%, p=0.194), while the protective effect disappeared in longer term (more than 10/11 years) (OR, 0.91; 95% CI, 0.80-1.03; I²=0.0%, p=0.870).

Conclusion: Evidence from our study mobile/cellular phone use may decrease risk of meningioma. Further studies are needed to explore the possible influence of long-term use of mobile phone and underlying mechanism.

Keywords: RF-EMF; Radiofrequency; Mobile phone; Cancer