Oxidative stress and prevention of the adaptive response to chronic iron overload in the brain of young adult rats exposed to a 150 kilohertz electromagnetic field med./bio.

To investigate whether a relationship exists between iron overload, exposure to electromagnetic fields and oxidative stress in the brain of young adult rats.

In 2009, Maaroufi et al. published their work about the influence of combined electromagnetic field exposure and iron overload as well as the treatments alone on spatial memory and learning in rats. To continue these experiments, the influence on molecular mechanisms, more precisely oxidative stress, were evaluated in the present study. Hence, the experimental setting is identical with Maaroufi et al. (2009).
The frequency of 150 kHz was chosen because intermediate frequencies have been poorly studied up to now, but are used in numerous electric devices such as induction cookers, metal detectors and welding devices.
Several groups of rats were examined (each group n=6-8): 1.) iron overload (daily injection of 3 mg FeSO₄ per kg body weight during 21 consecutive days), 2.) control group (daily injection of saline solution), 3.) electromagnetic field exposure, 4.) electromagnetic field exposure + iron overload (daily injection of 3 mg FeSO₄ per kg body weight during 21 consecutive days) and 5.) sham exposure.

• animal
• rat/ Wistar
• whole body

In the cerebellum, iron overload led to a significantly increased enzyme activity of the superoxide dismutase and the catalase compared to the control group with saline administration, while no influence was observed of iron overload on the lipid peroxidation.
On the contrary, electromagnetic field exposure significantly increased the lipid peroxidation in the cerebellum compared to the sham exposure group, but did not influence the antioxidant enzyme activities. The combination of electromagnetic field exposure and iron overload (group 4) led to a further increase of the lipid peroxidation: Here, the lipid peroxidation was significantly increased in the cerebellum in comparison to the sham exposure group and the electromagnetic field exposure group (group 3).
No significant differences between the groups were observed in the prefrontal cortex, striatum and hippocampus.