Mobile phone use may protect against or even help treat Alzheimer’s, concludes a new study in mice.

Mice without the disease exposed to high-frequency electromagnetic fields similar to those put out by mobile phones (‘cell phones’ to our US readers) also appeared to have better memory than control mice, says a study in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

“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,” says study author Gary Arendash of the University of South Florida, Tampa (press release). “It was even more astonishing that the electromagnetic waves generated by cell phones actually reversed memory impairment in old Alzheimer’s mice.”

In the study – which was originally released in September last year but has only just been press released – researchers exposed mice genetically modified to develop Alzheimer’s and un-modified mice to the electromagnetic field generated by standard cell phone usage for two one-hour periods a day. The cognitive skills of the mice were then examined using a water maze test and the EM field was found to offer both cognitive-enhancing and cognitive-protective effects.

The researchers propose several, potentially related, mechanisms whereby EM fields could act on brains, including increased neuronal activity, increased cerebral blood flow, and increased clearance of the amyloid-beta plaques found in Alzheimer’s sufferers.

“Although caution should be taken in extrapolating these mouse studies to humans, we conclude that EMF exposure may represent a non-invasive, non-pharmacologic therapeutic against Alzheimer’s disease and an effective memory-enhancing approach in general,” write the authors.

Image: experiment set up / USF