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PEOPLE WITH AT least three years of higher education are at greater risk for cancerous brain tumours than those with no more than nine years of schooling, perplexed researchers have found.
“There is a 19% increased risk that university-educated men could be diagnosed with glioma,” said Amal Khanolkar, a scientist at the Institute of Child Health in London and lead author of a study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community.
For women, he said, the risk rose by 23%.
“It was a surprising result which is difficult to explain,” Khanolkar told AFP.
Concretely, the increase in risk is minimal because such brain tumours are rare.
At the lowest level of education, the chances of glioma were reported at five in 3,000. At the other end of the educational spectrum, the odds increased to six in 3,000.
But the question remained as to whether the gap – no matter how small – was real and, if so, what caused it.
Earlier research exploring a possible link between education or social level, on the one hand, and the frequency of brain tumours, on the other, had been inconclusive.
To “put to rest” these conflicting findings, Khanolkar and colleagues at the Karolinska Institute medical university in Stockholm used a new approach.
Rather than comparing a small number of brain tumour patients with healthy individuals, they sifted through the health records of 4.3 million adults tracked by the Swedish public health system from 1993 to 2011.
The researchers distinguished between three kinds of brain tumours – two of them non-cancerous – with different causes.
The strong link between education level and tumour incidence held for all three types, but was strongest for deadly gliomas.
Interestingly, an even higher risk gap was found between low-income manual labourers and high-income men and women who did not work with their hands.
Gliomas are malignant brain tumours which grow rapidly and cause severe symptoms, including migraines, nausea and memory loss.
The survival rate is very low.
The study did not seek to explain the link between higher education and tumours, nor did it consider the potential impact of environmental and lifestyle factors, such as smoking or alcohol consumption.
The most common explanation for risk levels that rise with years spent in the classroom is that people with a higher education or income “have a better awareness of symptoms,” Khanolkar said.
This would mean they are more likely to seek help and receive a correct diagnosis.
But while this may be true in a country with a health system that clearly favours the well-to-do, the argument is far less convincing in the Swedish context, the researchers said.
“Sweden has a universal, tax-based health care system,” said Khanolkar. Everybody has roughly the same access to treatment.
Moreover, he added, gliomas form very rapidly – often within 48 hours – and are excruciatingly painful.
“The symptoms are not avoidable – you can’t sit at home and not seek care,” he said.
To further their probe, the team will canvass an updated version of the database for possible correlations between ethnicity and brain tumour risk.
Underlying genetic variation in populations from different geographic regions – where certain mutations are more or less common – could be a factor, Khanolkar acknowledged.
One expert, commenting on the study, pointed to other possible culprits.
“Two additional factors which might be of interest in this context are height and, in women, hormone replacement therapy,” said James Green, a clinical epidemiologist at the University of Oxford.
“Risk of brain tumours – as of most cancers – is higher in taller people, and taller people tend to be richer and more educated,” he noted.
“Hormone replacement therapy increases risk of brain tumours, and its use tends to vary by socio-economic group.”
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Is there irony in there somewhere with RTÉ obtaining these details considering the extraordinary fees they cough up to their own TV presenters?
Dead right. How many license fees does it take to pay RTE talent?
@Adam how many licence payers would it take to find any talent in rte?
ha ha, “talent”, ha ha, cough, splutter…
Makes you sick really… what did this guy do? Seriously? How many jobs did he create?
Special severance payment……Wtf is that? Do they make up names for robbery now …Meh! fookin basteds
Unreal. How many years of an average wage is that? Why were these things not chopped straight away?
There they are in the pic, Napoleon and Squealer from Orwell’s Animal Farm. ‘Every Animal is Equal.. but some are more equal than others’…… FF’s manefesto since the Haughey Era. Sad.
you’ll also remember from animal farm that the pigs got extra food because they carried out ‘brain work’ which, of course, is much harder than physical labour
This is obscene. McCarthy fingerprints are all over the mess this country is in.
He recieves a payout like this while the nation has only more hardship to look forward to.
The man who gave us Social Partnership and the Bank Guarantee (or at least helped).
There shouldn’t be a cent given for severance. A pension that’s 70% of salary is more than enough!
He doesn’t really care one way or the other, just as long as he’s sorted out. He and Seanie Fitz are going to be holidaying together comparing piss takes in the south of France.
Unbelievable !!.. the guy should have been fired by Enda & then but on trial for his role in our countries implosion, but this been Ireland the most he can expect is so harsh words in the Irish Times.
He didnt commit any crimes he should not be put on trial for anything. Yes the country needs to change its ways and certain politicians and senior civil servants behaved inappropriately but this blanket blame attitude gets no-one nowhere. He may be over paid but thats not a crime.
Ah so we wheeled out the circus and brought in the monkey. Are we really that surprised that FG are turning out to be really no better than FF.
All we ever hear is that “Oh we can’t make changes to that as it was in place before xyz, but going forward we will stop this”…. its always going forward.
They haven’t sorted out the judges, they haven’t sorted out the banks, the havent sorted out Bertie etc etc etc.
But yet the can wheel in tax after tax and get them implemented.
This will be news for today and then it will fall in under the carpet like John O’Donoghue and Sean Fitz etc etc and they incredible payoffs and monies these boys received.
It never changes, nothing ever changes.
Total farce. I really don’t understand why we as citizens put up with this kind of behaviour.
We put up with because were seen as docile cash cows, we grumble but we accept, I include myself
Wasn’t the retirement age raised last year? He has a BA and Masters in economics plus 40yrs service? What’s going on, can someone explain?
And Belusconi said Italy makes him wanna puke ??!! I’m throwing up here after reading this story. FG/Lab won’t do anything about it. All in the know ? Perhaps. Why do we put up wih it ? Coz we are being taken for fools & always have been & they get away with it.
A shower of Quango lovin’, overpaid, under utilised shower of feckers.
Still sucking it up even after removing there snouts from the trough. Absolutely F*****g disgusting
Imagine retiring at 57 on a pension of almost €150,000 a year. He’ll be getting that for the next 50 years of his life.
No civil servant deserves â
He’s going to live to 107 ?? Optimistic.. Haha
Journal.ie people, there are serious issues with comments carrying over from other users. The comment posted above is nothing remotely close to what I submitted. I wouldn’t be too happy if a post went up contrary to what I wanted and it was posted under my name. However in this case, it was pretty much spot on.
We are holding a referendum on the judges salary in October see no reason why we could not hold a referendum on these golden hand shakes and pensions. This should cover the top of the pile in the agencies of the state and the politicians as well who are also raking in large amounts of money.
I understand the problems with changing existing pension arrangements that go back decades, but it’s always seemed odd to me that the Oireachtas “can’t” do certain things. Surely with sufficient votes to pass a bill in the Dail and Senate, they can do anything that isn’t actually unconstitutional. And if what they want to do is unconstitutional but the electorate still want it to be done, can’t we just hold (yet another) referendum? What exactly is holding back a majority government with popular support from making difficult changes? One might be forced to conclude that they don’t *want* to do certain things, in which case we really should be told so that we can vote in a government that does.
And the greed goes on and on …..
We had the poster girls ‘bursting with flavour’ at the weekend(Hunky Dories)….now we have the poster boys for ‘bursting with greed’…
Over fed, spoilt, gout faced parasite. Sorry folks, childish I know but ffs… This man no more deserves this pension and pay off than Gaddafi deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. Just as well Berlusconi doesn’t reside over here.. Methinks he’d be anorexic in a month… Farcical to say the very least.
Ciaran, apparently he brought in a lot of bad things such as benchmarking, social partnership and other costly endeavours. Deserves to be punished not rewarded. The government doesnt mind interfering with JLC rates and minimum wage which is in peoples contracts but when its one of these guys they cant do anything about it – just write a piece of legislation and stop this kind of madness god damn it!
It’s criminal in these times and as crime is a family business how many of his relatives or his wife’s are employed in the civil service?
Also could some journalist find out how much the taxpayer contributed to his education. Possibly time off to do his masters as well as paying for it.
And with this knowledge he screws the taxpayer and is partly responsible fir the state of the nation. Did he train under Bertie?
Do you think the money that he contributed to his pension fund was invested well enough to return a profit to him resulting in a payout of over â
This quoting glitch is getting ridiculous now, at this stage. Now that the site is zipping along nicely, it’s the only sign of beta like behaviour left.
And people wonder why the country is broke! He’s only one of the many ‘civil servants’ and ‘public servants’ who are serving themselves at tax payers expense. The amount of money that is being paid to these parasites is obscene and in most cases undeserved. Serving and ex TD’s, Senators, Civil servants, Semi state fat cats, the the numerous quango kings and queens, the vast army of place men, party sycophants and crony’s who are all drawing their pieces of silver off the hard working backs of the ordinary Irish workers. If anyone actually delved into the number of leeches who are living very well off their ‘ENTITLEMENTS’ they would be shocked, there is a whole class of people in ireland who are bleeding the tax payer dry and they do not deserve anything like the financial benefits they are taking especially when you bear in mind what state they have left the country in. Only in Ireland would a generation of failed losers get away with it. The Irish people are being screwed by the ECB or IMF they are being screwed by their own, the greedy self serving elites and their crony’s, the same old faces from the same old places.
Just reading the comments.We should get out on the street ,and stop all the talk let the Government KNOW HOW YOU FEEL.They do not GIVE a Bo—-ks about you comments,STOP TALK THE TALK AND LET US ALL WALK THE WALK.
over feed,gout faced,parasite to kind a word……ide say theif,waster,leach,excuse for a government employee who has obviously liven the high life on our money judging by his girth,and to receive such a disgusting amount of money.Edna have you no shame oh sorry you ere just FF in disguise………..as soon as conservative politics leaves these shores only and only then will this country stand up….LABOUR TAKE HEED your going to be the new green party
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