American Journal of Epidemiology Advance Access originally published online on December 5, 2006
American Journal of Epidemiology 2007 165(2):231; doi:10.1093/aje/kwk099
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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
RE: "MOBILE PHONE USE AND RISK OF PAROTID GLAND TUMOR"
2318 Gravelly Beach Loop NW, Olympia, WA 98502
(e-mail: smilham{at}dc.rr.com)
In the abstract of their recent paper, "Mobile Phone Use and Risk of Parotid Gland Tumor," Lonn et al. write, "The authors conclude that the data do not support the hypothesis that mobile phone use is related to an increased risk of parotid gland tumors" (1, p. 637). I don't think that their data support that conclusion. In table 2 of their paper, all 13 of the calculated odds ratios are below 1.0. As the authors suggest, this is due to the fact that participating controls were more often cell phone users than were nonparticipants. In table 3 of their paper, 12 of 14 odds ratios for ipsilateral tumors are above 1.0, while 11 of 11 contralateral odds ratios are below 1.0. The authors suggest that this may be due to recall bias. More importantly, regular cell phone use is defined as "mobile phone use on average once per week during 6 months or more" (1, p. 638). Since there were only one case of malignant parotid tumor with 10 or more years of regular use and only two cases with 10 or more years since first regular use, there are just not enough cases with heavy long-term exposure for meaningful analysis. Throw in likely control participation bias and side-of-head-phone-use recall bias, and this study can't say anything about cell phone use and parotid gland tumors.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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Conflict of interest: none declared.
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References |
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 TOP References |
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- Lönn S, Ahlbom A, Christensen HC, et al. (2006) Mobile phone use and risk of parotid gland tumor. Am J Epidemiol 164:637–43.
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