cancer link dismissed

There is currently no consensus on the vexed question of mobile phone use and damage to an individual's health. One common and compelling hypothesis suggests that intracranial energy deposition from cellular telephones could lead to the development of acoustic neuroma. In April 23 Neurology, Joshua Muscat and colleagues from New York University Medical Center show that risk of developing acoustic neuroma is not related to cellular telephone use.

Muscat et al. performed an epidemiologic study of 90 patients and 86 control subjects and observed that the risk of developing the disease was 0.9 (p = 0.07). Variations in frequency, duration and lifetime hours of mobile phone use did not affect the probability of developing the cancer. In addition, in patients who used mobile phones, the tumor occurred more often on the contralateral than ipsilateral side of the head.

"Further efforts should focus on potentially longer induction periods," conclude the authors.