Comparison of biological effects between continuous and intermittent exposure to GSM-900-MHz mobile phone radiation: Detection of apoptotic cell-death features

Abstract

In the present study we used a 6-min daily exposure of dipteran flies, Drosophila melanogaster, to GSM-900MHz (Global System for Mobile Telecommunications) mobile phone electromagnetic radiation (EMR), to compare the effects between the continuous and four different intermittent exposures of 6min total duration, and also to test whether intermittent exposure provides any cumulative effects on the insect's reproductive capacity as well as on the induction of apoptotic cell death. According to our previous experiments, a 6-min continuous exposure per day for 5 days to GSM-900MHz and DCS-1800MHz (Digital Cellular System) mobile phone radiation, brought about a large decrease in the insect's reproductive capacity, as defined by the number of F(1) pupae. This decrease was found to be non-thermal and correlated with an increased percentage of induced fragmented DNA in the egg chambers' cells at early- and mid-oogenesis. In the present experiments we show that intermittent exposure also decreases the reproductive capacity and alters the actin-cytoskeleton network of the egg chambers, another known aspect of cell death that was not investigated in previous experiments, and that the effect is also due to DNA fragmentation. Intermittent exposures with 10-min intervals between exposure sessions proved to be almost equally effective as continuous exposure of the same total duration, whereas longer intervals between the exposures seemed to allow the organism the time required to recover and partly overcome the above-mentioned effects of the GSM exposure.