First symptom in sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (original) (raw)
Cellular phone use began in the United Kingdom in 1985. Sales increased slowly until 1992, more rapidly to 1997, before substantial growth to 2005 (figure). 1 The UK Stewart Report 2 into cellular phones and health concluded: "It is not possible at present to say that exposure to radio frequency radiation, even at levels below national guidelines, is totally without potential adverse health effects, and that the gaps in knowledge are sufficient to justify a precautionary approach." A recent case-control study from Sweden found up to fourfold risk associated with cellular phone use of 10 or more years' duration. 3 A number of studies both in Europe and the United States have found little or no evidence of an effect, 4 and a recent report from five countries suggests no substantial risk from the first decade of cellular phone use. 5 We examined time trends in national cancer registration rates of acoustic neuroma (and other benign cranial nerve neoplasms) from 1979 to 2001 in England and Wales and compared these with trends in cellular phone use. Methods. We extracted registrations of cases of acoustic neuroma (and other benign cranial nerve neoplasms; site codes International Classification of Diseases [ICD] 9 225.1 and ICD-10 D33.3, with morphology code 9560/0) for England and Wales from the National Cancer Registry, maintained by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), for the period 1979 to 2001. We calculated 3-year moving averages of the age-and sex-specific rates (hence the figure shows rates for 1980 to 2000). We also calculated directly age-standardized rates (European standard population). Annual population estimates from ONS provided denominator data. Results. From 1979 to 1997, annual registrations increased from 84 to 374 cases and then fell to 262 in 2001. Agestandardized 3-year moving average rates increased from 2.4 to 7.6 per million between 1980 and 1997 and then fell to 5.5 per million (see figure) in 2000. Trends were similar in men and women. From 1980 to 1997, 3-year moving average rates increased in all age groups, followed by a decline. This decrease was less evident in the younger groups. Discussion. The finding of increasing registrations of acoustic neuroma over recent decades is consistent with reports of in-From the
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