A follow-up study of the association between mobile phone use and symptoms of ill health

Bron: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28111420
Environ Health Toxicol. 2016 Dec 29. doi: 10.5620/eht.e2017001. (Epub ahead of print)

Cho YM 1, Lim HJ 2, Jang H 2, Kim K 2, Choi JW 2, Shin C3, Lee SK 3, Kwon JH 4, Kim N 5.

1 Institute for Life & Environment Technology, Smartive, Seoul, Korea.
2 Institute for Occupational and Environmental Health, Korea University, Seoul, Korea.
3 Institute of Human Genome Study, Korea University Ansan Hospital, Ansan, Korea.
4 EM Environment Research Team, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, Daejeon, Korea.
5 Division of Information and Communication Engineering, Chungbuk National University, Chungju, Korea.

Abstract

Objectives:
The duration and frequency of mobile phone calls, and their relationship with various health effects, have been investigated in our previous cross-sectional study. This two-year period follow-up study after aimed to assess the changes in these variables of same subjects.

Methods:
The study population comprised 532 non-patient adult subjects sampled from the Korean Genome Epidemiology Study. The subjects underwent a medical examination at a hospital in 2012/2013 and revisited the same hospital in 2014/2015 to have the same examination for the characteristics of mobile phone use performed. In addition, to evaluate the effects on health, the Headache Impact Test-6 (HIT-6), Psychosocial Well-being Index-Short Form (PWI-SF), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Korean-Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (K-IADL), Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), and 12-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-12) were analyzed. For all these tests, the higher the score, the greater the effect on health. Variances between scores in all the indices in the baseline and follow-up surveys were calculated, and correlations of each index were analyzed.

Results:
The average duration per call and HIT-6 score of the subjects decreased significantly compared with those recorded two years ago. The results showed a slight but significant correlation between call duration changes and HIT-6 score changes for female subjects, but not for males. HIT-6 scores in the follow-up survey significantly decreased compared to those in the baseline survey, but long-time call users (subjects whose call duration was ≥5 min in both the baseline and follow-up surveys) had no statistically significant reduction in HIT-6 scores.

Conclusion:
This study suggests that increased call duration is a greater risk factor for increases in headache than any other type of adverse health effect, and that this effect can be chronic.

KEYWORDS:
Headache Impact Test-6; headaches; mobile phones; non-specific symptoms



Lees verder in de categorie Onderzoeken | Terug naar homepage | Lees de introductie