COSMOS prospective cohort of mobile phone users
An international prospective cohort that records phone use from operator data rather than recall, designed to address the recall-bias problem that limits the case–control literature.
Provisional record — listed for completeness, excluded from the search index and sitemap until every value carries a primary citation. Last verified 12 August 2026.
- Authors
- COSMOS consortium
- Year
- 2024
- Design
- cohort
- Exposure studied
- Operator-recorded call time and data use, with long-term follow-up for cancer and other outcomes
- Place in the evidence base
- moderate
- Primary document
- https://www.ukcosmos.org/
Finding
Published analyses to date report no association between mobile phone call time and headache, tinnitus, sleep quality or, in reported cancer analyses, brain tumour incidence. Follow-up is ongoing.
What it cannot establish
Follow-up is still short relative to plausible latency for brain tumours, and participants are volunteers. Consult the consortium's publication list for the current state rather than relying on any single result.
Related records
- WHO-commissioned systematic review of RF exposure and cancer in humans (2024)
A systematic review and meta-analysis of human observational studies found no association between mobile phone use and brain or head-and-neck cancers, including for long-term and heavy use.
Research record
Sources
- cosmos-2024 COSMOS cohort study of mobile phone use and health outcomes — Imperial College London / COSMOS consortium. peer-reviewed, link checked 2026-08-12.
Same record, other formats