WEDNESDAY, Jan. 6 (HealthDay News) — Cell phone addicts of the world, listen up: Electromagnetic waves emanating from these ubiquitous gadgets may prevent or even reverse Alzheimer’s disease, researchers say.
Normal mice who had long-term exposure to such electromagnetic waves avoided developing Alzheimer’s, while mice who were already sick started getting better, scientists report in the Jan. 6 issue of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
The findings were actually the opposite of what the researchers were expecting.
“You can imagine our surprise when we did our first memory assessment and they were actually better,” said study author Gary Arendash, a research professor with the Florida Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, part of the University of South Florida in Tampa. “[And] we continued to see the beneficial effects in test after test, in group after group.”
Although preliminary, the findings also raise the tantalizing possibility that exposing people to electromagnetic waves could stave off or treat the debilitating disorder, which currently affects 5.3 million people in the United States alone.
“This needs further study to figure out how well this carries over to other animals, but it does start making you think that maybe there’s something to it,” said Dr. Michael Palm, an assistant professor of neuroscience and experimental therapeutics and internal medicine at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine in College Station. “But I don’t think we can quite jump to having people strap cell phones to their heads.”
William Thies, chief medical and scientific officer at the Alzheimer’s Association, agreed.
“This article is certainly no call to self-medicate by spending more time on your cell phone, especially in risky environments such as while driving,” Thies said in a statement. “No one should feel they are being protected from Alzheimer’s/dementia/cognitive decline by using their cell phones based on this study.”
Thies believes the finding “needs to be replicated in animals before we begin to even consider trying it in people, as animal models of Alzheimer’s and people with the disease are very different. Potential therapies that have been successful in mouse models of Alzheimer’s have not worked in people.”
Although various international health organizations have decided there are no health problems associated with cell phone-generated electromagnetic fields (EMFs), there’s a paucity of data on the long-range effects of EMFs on the brain, the study authors noted.
And researchers are still trying to tease out any risks associated with regular cell phone use. For instance, one recent study found an association — albeit a weak one — between talking on the cell phone and brain tumors.
In the new study, the USF team exposed mice that were genetically engineered to have Alzheimer’s disease to two one-hour sessions of high-frequency electromagnetic waves per day, for seven to nine months.
Healthy, younger mice exposed to the waves avoided developing Alzheimer’s altogether, while older mice with Alzheimer’s saw memory and other cognitive deficits improve, the researchers found.
Normal mice also developed better memory capacity after EMF exposure, the team noted.
Autopsies revealed that the waves had diminished the beta-amyloid protein plaques in the mouse brain — plaques that are believed by many to cause Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers hypothesized that an increase in brain temperature while being exposed to magnetic waves might be responsible for the change.
“In the Alzheimer’s mice, the cell phone exposure seems to have two effects that directly affect the disease process,” Arendash explained. “One is that electromagnetic fields suppress the aggregation of the bad protein. If the newly formed bad protein, beta amyloid, can’t form plaques, it’s more likely to be removed from the brain into the blood.”
The second possible method of action is that exposure increases brain cell activity which, again, could help flush bad proteins out of the brain, Arendash said.
While raising hopes, the small animal study does leave a slew of other questions unanswered, Palm said.
“The mouse model for Alzheimer’s doesn’t correlate exactly with what people have,” he noted.
And scientists don’t know how well cell phone-generated electromagnetic waves might penetrate the much thicker human skull, he added.
The researchers also didn’t look at neurofibrillary tangles, another hallmark of the disease typically found in the brain tissue of Alzheimer’s patients.
“Is this the whole picture or not?” Palm asked.
According to Arendash, the researchers next want to see if they can speed up any beneficial effects on the brain by changing the frequency or strength of the electromagnetic waves. Safety is also a big concern. And, of course, the findings need to be replicated in humans, he said.
More information
There’s more on this condition at the Alzheimer’s Association.