USING a mobile phone does not increase the risk of a deadly brain cancer, the biggest study so far has indicated.

Although it is impossible to say that there is no risk at all, the authors say that the data they have gathered so far provide no evidence of one.

Fears about mobile phones have not discouraged the public from buying and using them, but have encouraged a wave of research and reports from advisory bodies. Little good scientific evidence exists to show that they are a threat.

The latest findings come from the British part of the European Interphone Study, a 13-nation investigation funded by the European Union and mobile phone manufacturers. The British end of this study also had funding from the Department of Health.

Researchers from the universities of Leeds, Nottingham and Manchester and the Institute of Cancer Research in London interviewed 966 people who had had glioma diagnosed in Britain between the beginning of December 2000 and the end of February 2004. Their use of mobile phones — intensity, frequency and duration — was compared with that of 1,716 controls matched in other respects but not suffering from glioma.

The results, published in the online version of the British Medical Journal, show no difference in mobile phone use between healthy people and those with gliomas. If there had been a link, glioma sufferers would, on average, have used the phones more often or more intensively than non-users.

The team also found no link between the risk of glioma and the length of time since someone first started using a mobile phone or the number or length of calls that they made.

Anthony Swerdlow, of the Institute of Cancer Research, said that the results were in line with “numerous reviews” which had concluded that there was no raised risk. Only one researcher, Lennart Hardell, from Sweden, had found an apparent link, he said. “If you look at published reviews, you will see what the opinion is of Hardell’s work,” Professor Swerdlow said.

Professor Hardell’s most recent paper showed an apparent link for people living in rural areas, explained by the country base stations being farther apart and requiring phones to use more power.

The new study finds no such difference between town and country. But it does show an apparent increase in gliomas on the side of the head where people customarily hold the phone. The researchers say that this finding is probably due to bias: people who get gliomas are inclined afterwards to say that whichever side of the head the tumours appear was the side on which they used their phone.

This interpretation is backed by there being a deficiency in gliomas on the other side of the head. So if mobile phones cause cancer on the side that they are used, they must also protect against it on the other side — an implausible interpretation.

Patricia McKinney, Professor of Paediatric Epidemiology at Leeds University, said that public concern about the effect of mobile phones and tumours was not backed up by their study.

“Our study can only evaluate relatively short-term use, because the majority of people had used mobile phones for less than ten years,” she said. “Future studies will be able to address the risks of longer-term use, but we found no evidence of increased risks in the short to medium term.”

Critics may focus on how the mobile phone industry partly financed the study. But Professor Swerdlow said that the money was passed through an independent intermediary, the International Union against Cancer, and that “firewalls” prevented any improper influence being exerted.

Anxiety about mobile phones has been fostered by two official reports under the chairmanship of Sir William Stewart, a former chief scientific adviser, now the chairman of the Health Protection Agency. In both cases the reports have said that there is no evidence of risk, before going on to advise parents against allowing their children to use mobile phones excessively.

Professor Swerdlow said that it was difficult to assess what the risks might be to children. “There are extremely few children who have used mobile phones for long enough to have data on whether brain tumours may be increased by mobile use,” he said.

Participants in the study were all aged 18 or over at the time. Caution would be warranted only if mobile phones had a different effect on children’s brains than they do on those of adults. So far, there is no evidence of this.

Gliomas have been increasing at 2 to 3 per cent a year, probably as a result of better ascertainment, over the past 30 years. There are between 4,000 and 4,500 diagnoses of glioma a year in Britain.

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