People With High Educational Attainment Are More Prone To Brain Tumor, Study Reveals

In the United States, there will be approximately 78,000 new cases of primary brain tumor that will be diagnosed. Experts have yet to confirm what causes brain and central nervous system tumors, but a new study has linked increased risk of developing the condition to having higher levels of education.

According to a report from The Telegraph, men who have a bachelor's degree are 19 percent more likely to develop a glioma, a cancerous type of tumor originating from cells around neurons, than those who left school at age 16. Women on the other hand have even higher chances of developing tumors at 23 percent a 16 percent higher meningioma risk for those who have higher levels of education compared with women who did not.

Livescience.com has also reported that although the reasons behind the connection between high educational level and development of brain tumor are not clear, Amal Khanolkar, a research associate at the Institute of Child Health at the University College London and a co-author of the study said, "one possible explanation is that highly educated people may be more aware of symptoms and seek medical care earlier," and therefore are more likely to be diagnosed."

To do a further investigation on the potential risk factors, researchers utilized data on more than 4.3 million people living in Sweden who were born between 1911 and 1961 and who still live in Sweden in 1991. Medical News Today reported that all the study subjects were observed closely between the years 1993 and 2010 to see if they developed primary brain tumors. The researchers also collected data on their educational attainment, income, marital status, and occupation from national insurance, labor market, and national census data.

It was revealed that from 1993 to 2010, 1.1 million of the subjects died and more than 48,000 moved to another country. However, a total of 5,735 men and 7,101 women developed a brain tumor. Findings also revealed that disposable income levels were linked with a 14 percent increased risk of glioma among men, but not in women which surprised the researchers.

Dr. Khanolkar said, "This is an observational study based on national registers, so it is very hard to speculate on potential mechanisms that we couldn't really study. We have no reason to believe that stress is a potential risk factor, which perhaps is more common among people of lower socioeconomic position so it wouldn't explain the findings."

She also added that both detection bias and completeness of cancer registration in the national cancer register might potentially explain their findings. "There is no evidence suggesting that typical lifestyle factors generally adjusted for in epidemiological studies such smoking and physical activity are linked to brain tumors," she said.