History of allergic disease and epilepsy and risk of glioma and meningioma (INTERPHONE study group, Germany)

Abstract

The aim of the present analysis was to examine the association of a medical history of asthma, hay fever, eczema, or epilepsy with the risk of glioma and meningioma. Data of a German population-based case-control study included 381 meningioma cases, 366 glioma cases, and 1,494 controls. Participants' histories of asthma, hay fever, eczema, and epilepsy and the respective ages at onset were asked during a personal interview. A small inverse association between allergic condition and both glioma (odds ratio: 0.92; 95% CI: 0.70-1.22) and meningioma (odd ratio: 0.87; 95% CI: 0.66-1.14) was found. For glioma, this inverse association was more pronounced in persons reporting to have asthma compared to other allergic conditions. The positive association between epilepsy and particularly glioma suggests that epilepsy is an early symptom of the disease. As the association was seen also for epilepsies occurring more than a decade before the diagnosis of glioma, this might indicate either an aetiological role of epilepsy, or a relatively long preclinical phase. In conclusion our study confirms previous findings of case control studies but not those from cohort studies. However, possible selection bias in case control studies might not explain the different results in its entirety.

Primary brain tumours and specific serum immunoglobulin E: a case–control study nested in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition cohort

“…Our results support those from case-control studies based on self-reported allergic diseases (5-7, 16, 17, 28-32) and especially those of one case-control study using IgE measurement at the time of tumour diagnosis (19). In two case-control studies, associations between age at onset or duration of allergies (in years) and glioma risk were investigated using questionnaire data, but with conflicting results (16,18). In one cohort study (10), a reanalysis of data from individuals who reported allergies 5 years before a diagnosis of brain tumours were similar to results of the whole cohort.…”

“…The ImmunoCap test (Pharmacia AB, Uppsala Sweden) is one of the standardized tests for atopy in medical diagnostics (25,26), covering about 70-80% of the most common eight inhalant allergens in Europe. In addition, there is no evidence that the specific IgE concentration is influenced by gender and also the lower OR observed by Berg-Beckhoff et al (18) in children with a history of allergy compared with adults have not been confirmed until now. The IgE categories are known to be very stable in blood samples over 17 years (23) without any apparent degradation of IgE-defined allergies.…”

“…In one cohort study (10), a reanalysis of data from individuals who reported allergies 5 years before a diagnosis of brain tumours were similar to results of the whole cohort. Berg-Beckhoff et al (18) show that asthma, eczema and hay fever together ('allergic condition') were inversely associated with glioma or meningioma diagnosis when the duration was <10 years prior the brain tumour diagnosis.…”

“…Most studies of allergies and brain tumours used questionnaire data; hence, allergies were self-reported (5,7,(16)(17)(18) and could therefore be influenced by recall biases or differential misclassification. Only one case-control and one cohort study defined the atopic status of the study participants by measuring total serum IgE levels in glioma cases and controls in addition to the questionnaire data (10,19) and another cohort study used a skin prick test (12).…”

T. gondii Infection Acquired during Pregnancy and/or after Birth may be Responsible for Development of both Type 1 and 2 Diabetes Mellitus

“…As the association was observed also for epilepsies occurring more than a decade before the diagnosis of glioma, the authors suggested that this might indicate an etiological role of epilepsy, or a relatively long preclinical state [808]. This finding and reasoning is consistent with the recent suggestion that chronic latent T. gondii infection of the central nervous system may be responsible for development of ependymoma and glioma [809].…”