Abstract
Mobile phone use has rapidly increased worldwide, and pregnant women are passively or actively exposed to the associated electromagnetic radiation. Maternal cell phone exposure is related to behavioral difficulties in young offspring. However, whether prenatal mobile phone exposure can predispose the elderly offspring to cognitive impairment is unclear. The enriched environment (EE) has shown positive effects on cognition in an immature brain, but its impact on aging offspring after prenatal cell phone exposure is unknown. This study aimed to investigate whether prenatal exposure to mobile phone exerts long-term effects on cognition in elderly rat offspring and whether EE during adulthood can rescue cognitive impairment by altering the synaptic plasticity. Pregnant rats were subjected to prenatal short-term or long-term cell phone exposure and offspring rats were randomly assigned to standard or EE. Spatial learning and memory were investigated using Morris water maze (MWM) in elderly rat offspring. Hippocampal cellular morphology was assessed by hematoxylin-eosin staining and synaptic ultrastructure was evaluated with transmission electron microscopy. Expression of synaptophysin (SYN), postsynaptic density-95 (PSD-95), and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) were detected by western blot. The results demonstrated that prenatal long-term but not short-term exposure to mobile phone lead to cognitive impairment, morphological changes in the hippocampal cells, reduced synaptic number, decreased SYN, PSD-95, and BDNF expression in elderly offspring, which were alleviated by postnatal EE housing. These findings suggest that prenatal long-term mobile phone exposure may pose life-long adverse effects on elderly offspring and impair cognition by disrupting the synaptic plasticity, which may be reversed by postnatal EE housing.
Highlights
Mobile phone use has increased worldwide, especially in recent decades
Our study showed that prenatal long-term mobile phone exposure can cause cognitive impairment, changes in hippocampal morphology and synaptic ultrastructure, decreased expression of synaptic proteins, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in the elderly offspring
EE housing significantly improved cognitive function and inhibited adverse biochemical changes induced by prenatal long-term exposure to mobile phones in elderly rat offspring
Summary
Individuals including pregnant women are exposed to electromagnetic radiation emitted by mobile phones. It is possible for pregnant women to actively avoid electromagnetic radiation by reducing the use of mobile phones, passive exposure is omnipresent. A study has shown that high frequency maternal prenatal cell phone use is related to lower cognition in 5-year-old children (Sudan et al, 2018). An association between maternal exposure to a cell phone during pregnancy and behavioral difficulties in children between the age of 7 and 11 years has been reported (Divan et al, 2008). Studies were done in rodents found a link between prenatal cell phone exposure and cognitive impairment in offspring (Aldad et al, 2012). All these studies are based on newborn, adolescent, or adult offspring, and the effect of maternal cell phone exposure on cognition in elderly offspring is unclear
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