NTP cell phone studies — experts recommend elevated conclusions

In Environmental Factor, April 2018, article by Virginia Guidry. Full article is here.

A panel of external scientific experts met March 26-28 at NIEHS and recommended that some National Toxicology Program (NTP) conclusions be changed to indicate stronger levels of evidence that cell phone radiofrequency radiation (RFR) caused tumors in rats.

And:

Working from the NTP scale of clear evidence, some evidence, equivocal evidence, and no evidence, the panel made several recommendations.

The experts recommended that tumors in tissues surrounding nerves in the hearts of male rats, called malignant schwannomas, be reclassified from some evidence to clear evidence of carcinogenic activity.

In female rats, they recommended reclassification of malignant schwannomas from no evidence to equivocal evidence of carcinogenic activity. The panel agreed that there were unusual patterns of cardiomyopathy, or damage to heart tissue, in exposed male and female rats.

“When I look at these types of studies, I look for high-level signals that can infer mechanisms. I have more questions than answers, but the heart is clearly sending a signal in the rat studies, between the levels of cardiomyopathy and malignant tumors,” said panelist Rick Adler, D.V.M., Ph.D., senior director of discovery and regulatory pathology for GlaxoSmithKline.

Link to the technical reports and review is here and here.