Cellphones stop Alzheimer's

2010-01-07 09:22

Washington - Talking on a mobile phone could be good for you, because the electromagnetic waves emitted by the devices could protect against and even reverse Alzheimer's disease, a study on mice showed on Wednesday.

Researchers at the University of South Florida exposed 96 mice, most of whom had been genetically altered to develop the Alzheimer's disease as they aged, to electromagnetic waves generated by cellphones.

The mice were zapped with 918MHz of frequency twice a day for one hour each time over a period of seven to nine months - the equivalent of several decades in humans.

In older mice with Alzheimer's, long-term exposure to the electromagnetic fields caused deposits in the brain of beta-amyloid, a protein fragment that accumulates in the brain of Alzheimer's sufferers to form the disease's signature plaques, to be erased.

Memory levels boosted

Memory impairment in the older mice disappeared, too, the study showed.

Young adult mice with no apparent signs of memory impairment were protected against Alzheimer's disease after several months of exposure to the mobile phone waves, the study showed.

And the memory levels of normal mice with no genetic predisposition for Alzheimer's disease were boosted after exposure to the electromagnetic waves.

The study was the first to look at the long-term effects of mobile phone exposure in mice or humans, and its findings took even the researchers by surprise.

"Frankly, I started this work a few years ago with a hypothesis that the electromagnetic fields from a cellphone would be deleterious to Alzheimer's mice," said lead author Gary Arendash, a professor at the University of Southern Florida.

"When we got our initial results showing a beneficial effect, I thought, 'Give it a few more months and it will get bad for them.'

"It never got bad. We just kept getting these beneficial effects in both the Alzheimer's and normal mice," Arendash said.

Based on the findings in mice, the researchers are hopeful that electromagnetic field exposure could be an effective, non-invasive and drug-free way to prevent and treat Alzheimer's disease in humans.
 

- SAPA