A genotoxic analysis of the hematopoietic system after mobile phone type radiation exposure in rats

Genotoxic effects of electromagnetic field radiations from mobile phones

The use of wireless communication technology in mobile phones has revolutionized modern telecommunication and mobile phones have become so popular that their number exceeds the global population. Electromagnetic field radiations (EMR) are an integral part of wireless technology, which are emitted by mobile phones, mobile tower antennas, electric power stations, transmission lines, radars, microwave ovens, television sets, refrigerators, diagnostic, therapeutic, and other electronic devices. Manmade EMR sources have added to the existing burden of natural EMR human exposure arising from the Sun, cosmos, atmospheric discharges, and thunder storms. EMR including radiofrequency waves (RF) and extremely low-frequency radiation (ELF) has generated great interest as their short-term exposure causes headache, fatigue, tinnitus, concentration problems, depression, memory loss, skin irritation, sleep disorders, nausea, cardiovascular effects, chest pain, immunity, and hormonal disorders in humans, whereas long-term exposure to EMR leads to the development of cancer. The review has been written by collecting the information using various search engines including google scholar, PubMed, SciFinder, Science direct, EMF-portal, saferemr, and other websites from the internet. The main focus of this review is to delineate the mutagenic and genotoxic effects of EMR in humans and mammals. Numerous investigations revealed that exposure in the range of 0-300 GHz EMR is harmless as it did not increase micronuclei and chromosome aberrations. On the contrary, several other studies have demonstrated that exposure to EMR is genotoxic and mutagenic as it increases the frequency of micronuclei, chromosome aberrations, DNA adducts, DNA single and double strand breaks at the molecular level in vitro and in vivo. The EMR exposure induces reactive oxygen species and changes the fidelity of genes involved in signal transduction, cytoskeleton formation, and cellular metabolism.

Acute and Chronic Exposure to 900 MHz Radio Frequency Radiation Activates p38/JNK-mediated MAPK Pathway in Rat Testis

The use of electronic devices such as mobile phones has had a long stretch of rapid growth all over the world. Therefore, exposure to radio frequency radiation (RFR) has increased enormously. Here, we aimed to assess the balance between cell death and proliferation and also investigate the involvement of the JNK/p38 MAPK signaling pathway in the testis of rats exposed to 900 MHz RFR in acute and chronic periods (2 h/day, 5 days/week) for 1 or 10 weeks, respectively. The expression of proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), Bcl-xL, cleaved caspase-3, phosphorylated-JNK (p-JNK), and phosphorylated-p38 (p-p38) was analyzed in line with histopathology and TUNEL analysis in rat testis. There were no histopathological differences between sham and RFR groups in the acute and chronic groups. PCNA expression was not altered between groups in both periods. However, alterations for cleaved caspase-3 and Bcl-xL were observed depending on the exposure period. TUNEL analysis showed a significant increase in the RFR group in the acute period, whereas no difference in the chronic groups for the apoptotic index was reported. In addition, both p-p38 and p-JNK protein expressions increased significantly in RFR groups in both periods. Our study indicated that 900 MHz RFR might result in alterations during acute period exposure for several parameters, but this can be ameliorated in the chronic period in rat testis. Here, we also report the involvement of the p38/JNK-mediated MAPK pathway after exposure to 900 MHz RFR. Hence, this information might shed light in future studies toward detailed molecular mechanisms in male reproduction and infertility.

A meta-analysis of in vitro exposures to weak radiofrequency radiation exposure from mobile phones (1990-2015)

To function, mobile phone systems require transmitters that emit and receive radiofrequency signals over an extended geographical area exposing humans in all stages of development ranging from in-utero, early childhood, adolescents and adults. This study evaluates the question of the impact of radiofrequency radiation on living organisms in vitro studies. In this study, we abstract data from 300 peer-reviewed scientific publications (1990-2015) describing 1127 experimental observations in cell-based in vitro models. Our first analysis of these data found that out of 746 human cell experiments, 45.3% indicated cell changes, whereas 54.7% indicated no changes (p = 0.001). Realizing that there are profound distinctions between cell types in terms of age, rate of proliferation and apoptosis, and other characteristics and that RF signals can be characterized in terms of polarity, information content, frequency, Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) and power, we further refined our analysis to determine if there were some distinct properties of negative and positive findings associated with these specific characteristics. We further analyzed the data taking into account the cumulative effect (SAR × exposure time) to acquire the cumulative energy absorption of experiments due to radiofrequency exposure, which we believe, has not been fully considered previously. When the frequency of signals, length and type of exposure, and maturity, rate of growth (doubling time), apoptosis and other properties of individual cell types are considered, our results identify a number of potential non-thermal effects of radiofrequency fields that are restricted to a subset of specific faster-growing less differentiated cell types such as human spermatozoa (based on 19 reported experiments, p-value = 0.002) and human epithelial cells (based on 89 reported experiments, p-value < 0.0001). In contrast, for mature, differentiated adult cells of Glia (p = 0.001) and Glioblastoma (p < 0.0001) and adult human blood lymphocytes (p < 0.0001) there are no statistically significant differences for these more slowly reproducing cell lines. Thus, we show that RF induces significant changes in human cells (45.3%), and in faster-growing rat/mouse cell dataset (47.3%). In parallel with this finding, further analysis of faster-growing cells from other species (chicken, rabbit, pig, frog, snail) indicates that most undergo significant changes (74.4%) when exposed to RF. This study confirms observations from the REFLEX project, Belyaev and others that cellular response varies with signal properties. We concur that differentiation of cell type thus constitutes a critical piece of information and should be useful as a reference for many researchers planning additional studies. Sponsorship bias is also a factor that we did not take into account in this analysis.

Effect of Radiofrequency Radiation on Human Hematopoietic Stem Cells

Exposure to electromagnetic fields in the radiofrequency range is ubiquitous, mainly due to the worldwide use of mobile communication devices. With improving technologies and affordability, the number of cell phone subscriptions continues to increase. Therefore, the potential effect on biological systems at low-intensity radiation levels is of great interest. While a number of studies have been performed to investigate this issue, there has been no consensus reached based on the results. The goal of this study was to elucidate the extent to which cells of the hematopoietic system, particularly human hematopoietic stem cells (HSC), were affected by mobile phone radiation. We irradiated HSC and HL-60 cells at frequencies used in the major technologies, GSM (900 MHz), UMTS (1,950 MHz) and LTE (2,535 MHz) for a short period (4 h) and a long period (20 h/66 h), and with five different intensities ranging from 0 to 4 W/kg specific absorption rate (SAR). Studied end points included apoptosis, oxidative stress, cell cycle, DNA damage and DNA repair. In all but one of these end points, we detected no clear effect of mobile phone radiation; the only alteration was found when quantifying DNA damage. Exposure of HSC to the GSM modulation for 4 h caused a small but statistically significant decrease in DNA damage compared to sham exposure. To our knowledge, this is the first published study in which putative effects (e.g., genotoxicity or influence on apoptosis rate) of radiofrequency radiation were investigated in HSC. Radiofrequency electromagnetic fields did not affect cells of the hematopoietic system, in particular HSC, under the given experimental conditions.

Lessons and Perspectives from a 25-Year Bioelectromagnetics Research Program

The question of whether electromagnetic fields from electric power or telecommunications systems can be linked unequivocally to health detriments has occupied scientific research endeavors for nearly half a century. For 25 years, the bioelectromagnetic research group at Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia, has pursued a series of investigations with relevant endpoints, such as neurophysiological and neuropsychological effects, cell calcium level changes, proliferation, and genotoxic effects. Most have shown no significant changes due to fields, however, in some pilot studies significant changes were revealed, but in most cases these were not replicated in follow-up studies. This highlights a feature of this research area, generally; the unambiguous identification of small changes in noisy data where the understanding of possible interaction mechanisms is lacking. On the other hand, mathematical modelling studies, particularly with respect to fields near metallic implants, in workers exposed to fields in harsh environmental conditions and at very high frequencies (THz), continue to add to the expanding knowledge database on the characteristics of the complex electromagnetic environment we live in today.