Lennart Hardell on the latest UK brain tumour paper (last message)

A recent article describes increasing incidence of the most malignant type of brain tumor, glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) in England during 1995-2015. The number of patients increased from 2.4 to 5.0 per 100,000 during that time period. In total the yearly increase was from 983 to 2,531 patients, thus a substantial number. The incidence of low-grade glioma decreased but was stabilized from 2004, see figure 2. Thus the increasing incidence cannot be explained by low-grade glioma transforming to high-grade (GBM). The authors conclude that a general environmental factor must be the cause.

SNIP

We published incidence data on brain tumours for the time period 1998-2015 based on the Swedish Cancer Register.