Do you ever think your education and wealthiness can be linked with brain tumor risk? A recent study finds that people who have university degree, a professional career or a big paycheck may be more likely to develop certain types of brain tumors than people who are less well-off or not as educated.
The study was conducted by the researchers from University College London in the United Kingdom and the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. They published their findings in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.
According to the study, the medical data for more than 4.3 million residents of Sweden revealed that, people who have higher education and better jobs were more likely to diagnosed with one of three types of brain tumor meningioma, glioma or acoustic neuroma.
Results show that men with a university education which lasted at least 3 years were 19 percent more likely to develop a glioma, compared with men whose education did not go beyond compulsory schooling, which was 9 years of primary education.
Like wise, women who went on to higher education had a 23 percent higher glioma risk and a 16 percent higher meningioma risk, compared with women who did not.
"People with higher education are perhaps more likely to detect symptoms and seek medical care earlier on," said lead researcher Amal Khanolkar, a research associate with University College London's Institute of Child Health .
The National Brain Tumor Society (NBTS) noted that the study only establishes an association between these factors and brain tumors. "An 'association' does not constitute cause or risk factor, and does not necessarily infer that education, money, and/or marriage have any prospective effect on whether individuals, or groups of people, may develop a brain tumor," the NBTS said in a written statement.
Elizabeth Ward, the American Cancer Society's national vice president for intramural research, said that, "If you were more educated, you might go to the internet and say, "Hmm, I've got hearing loss in my right ear, I need to go get it checked out,' but someone with less education might pass it off."
"There's no cause for people to be concerned about their own individual risk, based on this study," Ward said.
Dr. Raj K. Narayan, the chair of neurosurgery at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York, who was not involved in the new study, said that, "It has been an 'urban legend' among neurosurgeons that smarter people are more likely to get brain tumors." "However, I am somewhat surprised to find that this may actually be true."
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