Abstract
Background and purpose
The pathogenesis of primary brain tumors may be related to immune response. Prior studies have shown a strong association between allergy and glioma; however, so far no significant association has been established between allergy and meningioma. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis of published studies to investigate the association of meningioma with the overall and specific allergic conditions.
Methods
PubMed, EMBASE database, and Cochrane Library were searched for pertinent citations published between January 1979 and October 2009. We used the following searching strategy (brain tumor [Text Word] OR meningioma [Text Word]) AND (allergy [Text Word] OR atopy [Text Word] OR asthma [Text Word] OR eczema [Text Word] OR hay fever [Text Word]) to search for relevant studies. Random effect model was used to estimate the association between allergic conditions and meningioma.
Result
A total of 7 studies (5 case–control studies and 2 cohort studies) were included in the analysis, involving 54,391 participants, of whom 2,656 had meningioma. When compared to non-allergic conditions, the pooled odds ratio (OR) with any allergic conditions for meningioma was 0.91 (95% CI: 0.79–1.04, p = 0.163), suggesting that there is no significant association between meningioma and allergic conditions. Interestingly, further analysis showed that eczema had significantly inverse association with meningioma (OR, 0.75; 95% CI: 0.65–0.87, p < 0.05). On the other hand, no significant association was found for asthma (OR, 0.88; 95% CI: 0.75–1.04, p = 0.126) and hay fever (OR, 0.90; 95% CI: 0.79–1.03, p = 0.137).
Conclusion
In conclusion, there was a significantly negative association between eczema and meningioma, suggesting that eczema may reduce the risk of meningioma. Although it was not statistically significant association between meningioma and other specific allergic conditions such as asthma and hay fever, further studies with large sample size may be needed to determine its relationship.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bondy M, Ligon BL (1996) Epidemiology and etiology of intracranial meningiomas: a review. J Neurooncol 29:197–205
Longstreth WT Jr, Dennis LK, McGuire VM, Drangsholt MT, Koepsell TD (1993) Epidemiology of intracranial meningioma. Cancer 72:639–648
Vernooij MW, Ikram MA, Tanghe HL, Vincent AJ, Hofman A, Krestin GP, Niessen WJ et al (2007) Incidental findings on brain MRI in the general population. N Engl J Med 357:1821–1828
Rausing A, Ybo W, Stenflo J (1970) Intracranial meningioma—a population study of ten years. Acta Neurol Scand 46:102–110
Rajaraman P, Wang SS, Rothman N, Brown MM, Black PM, Fine HA et al (2007) Polymorphisms in apoptosis and cell cycle control genes and risk of brain tumors in adults. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 16:1655–1661
Bethke L, Murray A, Webb E, Schoemaker M, Muir K, McKinney P et al (2008) Comprehensive analysis of DNA repair gene variants and risk of meningioma. J Natl Cancer Inst 100:270–276
Sadetzki S, Flint-Richter P, Starinsky S, Novikov I, Lerman Y, Goldman B et al (2005) Genotyping of patients with sporadic and radiation-associated meningiomas. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 14:969–976
Wrensch M, Bondy ML, Wiencke J, Yost M (1993) Environmental risk factors for primary malignant brain tumors: a review. J Neurooncol 17:47–64
Wrensch M, Minn Y, Chew T, Bondy M, Berger MS (2002) Epidemiology of primary brain tumors: current concepts and review of the literature. Neuro Oncol 4:278–299
Berg-Beckhoff G, Schuz J, Blettner M, Munster E, Schlaefer K, Wahrendorf J et al (2009) History of allergic disease and epilepsy and risk of glioma and meningioma (INTERPHONE study group, Germany). Eur J Epidemiol 24:433–440
Wigertz A, Lonn S, Schwartzbaum J, Hall P, Auvinen A, Christensen HC et al (2007) Allergic conditions and brain tumor risk. Am J Epidemiol 166:941–950
Schoemaker MJ, Swerdlow AJ, Hepworth SJ, van Tongeren M, Muir KR, McKinney PA (2007) History of allergic disease and risk of meningioma. Am J Epidemiol 165:477–485
Schwartzbaum J, Jonsson F, Ahlbom A, Preston-Martin S, Lonn S, Soderberg KC et al (2003) Cohort studies of association between self-reported allergic conditions, immune-related diagnoses and glioma and meningioma risk. Int J Cancer 106:423–428
Brenner AV, Linet MS, Fine HA, Shapiro WR, Selker RG, Black PM et al (2002) History of allergies and autoimmune diseases and risk of brain tumors in adults. Int J Cancer 99:252–259
Schlehofer B, Blettner M, Preston-Martin S, Niehoff D, Wahrendorf J, Arslan A et al (1999) Role of medical history in brain tumour development. Results from the international adult brain tumour study. Int J Cancer 82:155–160
Wiemels J, Wrensch M, Claus EB (2010) Epidemiology and etiology of meningioma. J Neurooncol 99:307–314
Ryan P, Lee MW, North B, McMichael AJ (1992) Risk factors for tumors of the brain and meninges: results from the Adelaide Adult Brain Tumor Study. Int J Cancer 51:20–27
Linos E, Raine T, Alonso A, Michaud D (2007) Atopy and risk of brain tumors: a meta-analysis. J Natl Cancer Inst 99:1544–1550
Chen C, Xu T, Chen J, Zhou J, Yan Y, Lu Y et al (2010) Allergy and risk of glioma: a meta-analysis. Eur J Neurol 18:387–395
Wells GA, Shea B, O’Connell D et al. The Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) for assessing the quality of nonrandomised studies in meta-analyses. http://www.ohri.ca/programs/clinical_epidemiology/oxford.htm
Schwartzbaum J, Ahlbom A, Malmer B, Lonn S, Brookes AJ, Doss H et al (2005) Polymorphisms associated with asthma are inversely related to glioblastoma multiforme. Cancer Res 65:6459–6465
Cicuttini FM, Hurley SF, Forbes A, Donnan GA, Salzberg M, Giles GG et al (1997) Association of adult glioma with medical conditions, family and reproductive history. Int J Cancer 71:203–207
Rajaraman P, Brenner AV, Neta G, Pfeiffer R, Wang SS, Yeager M et al (2010) Risk of meningioma and common variation in genes related to innate immunity. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 19:1356–1361
Chang M, Lee AJ, Fitzpatrick L, Zhang M, Sun SC (2009) NF-kappa B1 p105 regulates T cell homeostasis and prevents chronic inflammation. J Immunol 182:3131–3138
Weidinger S, Gieger C, Rodriguez E, Baurecht H, Mempel M, Klopp N et al (2008) Genome-wide scan on total serum IgE levels identifies FCER1A as novel susceptibility locus. PLoS Genet 4:e1000166
Rajaraman P, Brenner AV, Butler MA, Wang SS, Pfeiffer RM, Ruder AM et al (2009) Common variation in genes related to innate immunity and risk of adult glioma. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 18:1651–1658
Ellyard JI, Simson L, Parish CR (2007) Th2-mediated anti-tumour immunity: friend or foe? Tissue Antigens 70:1–11
Grewe M, Walther S, Gyufko K, Czech W, Schopf E, Krutmann J (1995) Analysis of the cytokine pattern expressed in situ in inhalant allergen patch test reactions of atopic dermatitis patients. J Invest Dermatol 105:407–410
Taha RA, Leung DY, Ghaffar O, Boguniewicz M, Hamid Q (1998) In vivo expression of cytokine receptor mRNA in atopic dermatitis. J Allergy Clin Immunol 102:245–250
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Mei Wang and Chao Chen contributed equally to the work.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Wang, M., Chen, C., Qu, J. et al. Inverse association between eczema and meningioma: a meta-analysis. Cancer Causes Control 22, 1355–1363 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-011-9808-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-011-9808-6