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Journal Article
The MOBI-Kids Study Protocol: Challenges in Assessing Childhood and Adolescent Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields from Wireless Telecommunication Technologies and Possible Association with Brain Tumor Risk
- Authors
- Siegal Sadetzki, Chelsea Eastman Langer, Revital Bruchim, Michael Kundi, Franco Merletti, Roel Vermeulen, Hans Kromhout, Ae-Kyoung Lee, Myron Maslanyj, Malcolm R. Sim, Masao Taki, Joe Wiart, Bruce Armstrong, Elizabeth Milne, Geza Benke, Rosa Schattner, Hans-Peter Hutter, Adelheid Woehrer, Daniel Krewski, Charmaine Mohipp, Franco Momoli, Paul Ritvo, John Spinelli, Brigitte Lacour, Dominique Delmas, Thomas Remen, Katja Radon, Tobias Weinmann, Swaantje Klostermann, Sabine Heinrich, Eleni Petridou, Evdoxia Bouka, Paraskevi Panagopoulou, Rajesh Dikshit, Rajini Nagrani, Hadas Even-Nir, Angela Chetrit, Milena Maule, Enrica Migliore, Graziella Filippini, Lucia Miligi, Stefano Mattioli, Naohito Yamaguchi, Noriko Kojimahara, Mina Ha, Kyung-Hwa Choi, Andrea ’t Mannetje, Amanda Eng, Alistair Woodward, Gema Carretero, Juan Alguacil, Nuria Aragones, Maria Morales Suare-Varela, Geertje Goedhart, A. Antoinette Y. N. Schouten-van Meeteren, A. Ardine M. J. Reedijk, Elisabeth Cardis
- Issue Date
- 2014-09
- Citation
- Frontiers in Public Health, v.2, pp.1-10
- ISSN
- 2296-2565
- Publisher
- Frontiers
- Language
- English
- Type
- Journal Article
- Abstract
- The rapid increase in mobile phone use in young people has generated concern about pos- sible health effects of exposure to radiofrequency (RF) and extremely low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic fields (EMF). MOBI-Kids, a multinational case-control study, investigates the potential effects of childhood and adolescent exposure to EMF from mobile communi- cations technologies on brain tumor risk in 14 countries. The study, which aims to include approximately 1,000 brain tumor cases aged 10-24 years and two individually matched controls for each case, follows a common protocol and builds upon the methodological experience of the INTERPHONE study. The design and conduct of a study on EMF expo- sure and brain tumor risk in young people in a large number of countries is complex and poses methodological challenges.This manuscript discusses the design of MOBI-Kids and describes the challenges and approaches chosen to address them, including: (1) the choice of controls operated for suspected appendicitis, to reduce potential selection bias related to lowresponse rates among population controls; (2) investigating a young study population spanning a relatively wide age range; (3) conducting a large, multinational epidemiologi- cal study, while adhering to increasingly stricter ethics requirements; (4) investigating a rare and potentially fatal disease; and (5) assessing exposure to EMF from communication technologies. Our experience in thus far developing and implementing the study protocol indicates that MOBI-Kids is feasible and will generate results that will contribute to the understanding of potential brain tumor risks associated with use of mobile phones and other wireless communications technologies among young people.
- KSP Keywords
- Case-control study, Communications technologies, Electromagnetic Field(EMF), Extremely low frequency, Health effects, brain tumor, communication technologies, mobile phone, selection bias, wireless communication, wireless telecommunication
This work is distributed under the term of Creative Commons License (CCL)
(CC BY)
(CC BY)
