Abstract
The association between mobile phone use and incident cancers remains uncertain. We aimed to investigate the relationships of mobile phone use with incident overall and 25 site-specific cancers in men and women.
A total of 431,861 participants ages 38 to 73 years without prior cancers were included from the UK Biobank. Of these, 46.7% were male. Participants who used a mobile phone at least once per week to make or receive calls were defined as mobile phone users. The study outcomes were incident overall and 25 site-specific cancers.
During a median follow-up of 10.7 years, 35,401 (17.5%) men and 30,865 (13.4%) women developed overall cancer. Mobile phone use was significantly associated with higher risks of incident overall cancer [HR, 1.09; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.06–1.12], nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC; HR, 1.08; 95% CI: 1.03–1.14), urinary tract cancer (HR, 1.18; 95% CI:1.05–1.32), and prostate cancer (HR, 1.19; 95% CI: 1.13–1.25) in men, and incident overall cancer (HR, 1.03; 95% CI: 1.00–1.06), NMSC (HR, 1.07; 95% CI: 1.01–1.13), and vulva cancer (HR, 1.74; 95% CI: 1.00–3.02) in women, but not with other cancers. Among mobile phone users, there was a dose–response relationship of length of mobile phone use with incident NMSC in men and women, and prostate cancer in men (all Ptrend < 0.05).
There was a dose–response relationship of length of mobile phone use with incident NMSC in men and women, and prostate cancer in men.
Our findings underscore the importance of limiting mobile phone use or keeping a distance from mobile phone for primary prevention of NMSC and prostate cancer.