Epidemiology of Intracranial Gliomas

Gliomas are the most common primary intracranial neoplasms, which cause significant mortality and morbidity that is disproportionate to their relatively rare incidence. Many potential risk factors for glioma have been studied to date, but only few provide explanation for the number of brain tumor cases identified. The most significant findings include increased risk due to exposure to ionizing radiation and decreased risk with the history of allergy or atopic diseases. The potential effect of the cellular phone usage has been evaluated extensively, but the results remain inconclusive. A very small proportion of gliomas can be attributed to inherited genetic disorders. Additionally, recent analyses using the genome-wide association study design have identified several inherited genomic risk variants.