4 ms·
> cases of GBM in England have increased from around 1,250 a year in 1995 to just under 3,000. Not only the population of UK has increased in this time, it has
by tonmoy 8y ago
> cases of GBM in England have increased from around 1,250 a year in 1995 to just under 3,000.
Not only the population of UK has increased in this time, it has also gotten older on average. Moreover is 0.002% of population getting GBM per year even significant enough to blame mobile phones (that is used by everyone)?
- gnode 8y agoAre there any statistics available which can link GBM to age?
- jhayward 8y agoIt doesn't have to be linked to age, just a yearly probability summed over more years. Then you can start adding in the things that make people live longer, like less heart disease per year of life, etc., and you get the same effect they are charting.
- pdpi 8y agoIf the effect isn't related to age, then what you're describing is captured by population.
- taoistextremist 8y agoAny cancer is related to age in the sense that the older a person is, the more opportunity they've had to encounter it. I suppose the best way to look at it is see how many cumulative years a population represents: if a population is getting older on average, then the cumulative years have risen, therefore there's been more opportunity to encounter this disease.
- jhayward 8y agoTrue.
- emsy 8y agoAnd brain cancer detection probably got better as well.
- klipt 8y agoGBMs kill ~78% of patients within 2 years. Earlier detection wouldn't change the statistics much.
- manicdee 8y agoEarlier detection means you find the GBM before the person dies some other way that doesn’t require autopsy.
- klipt 8y agoMaybe, but has earlier detection really impacted GBM much? It's not like breast or testicular cancer - we can't encourage the population to "examine your brain for lumps". Even today someone could have no obvious symptoms of GBM one day, then have a seizure while driving and die in a car crash the next day. Though I guess if car crashes were a common cause of death that doesn't require autopsy, you'd see some difference in GBM rates between car heavy places like the US, vs places with better public transit like EU.
- unit91 8y agoAgreed. Also not accounted for is the UK's huge immigration surge (more than doubling the foreign-born UK populace of the mid-90s). [1] Different ancestries carry with them different genetic predispositions. It might be that the GBM rise is due to phenotypes not phones. [1] http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migrants-in-the-uk-an-overview/ http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings...
- zhengyi13 8y agoMy little brother died of a GBM about 3 years ago. The research I did at the time indicated that there are essentially no known predictors of GBMs; there appears to be a very slight correlation with being white, male, and ~30-50, all which matched for him.
- unit91 8y agoI'm really sorry to hear about your brother. Thanks for sharing what you learned though!
- nabla9 8y ago> Not only the population of UK has increased in this time, it has also gotten older on average. Every study that measures disease or death rates takes this into account. They use standard populations (standard millions) to create age-adjusted statistics. In this case it was European Standard Population (ESP–2013) they used. The article reports increase in all age groups. The article is not making any link between brain cancer and mobile phones. There is just little speculation to crate headlines.
- mr_toad 8y agoThe study will (probably) have corrected for this, but the Daily Telegraph is quoting raw numbers.