Could mobile phone radiation protect against Alzheimer’s disease?

NEW YORK: Long-term exposure to electromagnetic waves from mobile phones may prevent and even reverse the damage of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a controversial new study.

Pending additional research, the authors claim that the finding could lead to new non-invasive therapies for people with Alzheimer’s and traumatic brain injuries.

“It surprised us to find that cell phone exposure, begun in early adulthood, protects the memory of mice otherwise destined to develop Alzheimer’s symptoms,” said Gary Arendash, lead author of the study and a neurobiologist at the University of South Florida in Tampa, USA.

“Most surprising were the benefits to memory we clearly observed – just the opposite of what we predicted,” he said.

Brain tumour link

The radiation from mobile phones has previously come under significant scrutiny, and some researchers have argued that the high-frequency electromagnetic fields (EMFs) which they emit could cause brain tumours.

EMFs have also previously been linked to increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). But, according to the latest advice from the World Health Organisation, mobile radiation poses no serious risks to health.

The new study – published this week in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease – provides the first evidence that mobile radiation might actually benefit the brain, at least in mice.

The researchers studied 96 mice of three different types: normal mice, adolescent mice that had been genetically altered to have an AD-like cognitive disorder, and older mice with the same mutation.

Memory and cognitive tests

The mice were housed in cages centred around an EMF antenna which emitted frequencies similar to those experienced by humans when they talk on a mobile phone (918MHz). The antenna was turned on for one hour, twice a day, over a period of seven to nine months.

The researchers then put the mice through a series of memory and cognitive tests analogous to those used to test for AD in humans. Normal mice performed above average on the tests, and the young genetically-altered mice performed as well as older non-dementia mice. Memory impairment in older AD mice disappeared, said Arendash.

While the mechanisms behind the results aren’t clear, the researchers suspect that EMF may increase both blood flow and metabolism in the brain, bumping up its overall activity.



The results suggest that the EMFs not only protected younger mice from developing AD-like symptoms and boosted memory, they also reversed memory loss in older animals with the AD-like disorder. The radiation seemed to affect beta-amyloid plaques — a hallmark of AD — by both erasing them and preventing their formation, the study reports.

James Burch, is an environmental epidemiologist at the University of South Carolina in Columbia who has also studied the relationship between EMFs and amyloid plaques. He cautioned that even “if certain limited exposures have beneficial effects, there is [still] the possibility that exposures with a different duration or dose may be harmful.”

Devices are “not benign”

“Any biological effect associated with cell phone use underscores the fact that the fields generated by these devices are not benign or inconsequential,” added Burch. “Any measurable, repeatable effect of mobile phone exposure on the brain is potentially important [in improving our understanding].”

Other researchers noted that mice are not a perfect model for humans, so these results may not directly translate to humans. Lief Salford, director of neurosurgery at Lund University in Sweden commented: “What is true for one animal might not be true for humans, and sometimes scientists even have trouble seeing the same results in two different strains of the same species.”

Arendash said that he will next test different EMF wavelengths on mice to see if he can replicate the effects and discover if other frequencies are harmful.

– http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/