Evaluations of Acute and Sub-Acute Biological Effects of Narrowband and Moderate-Band High Power Electromagnetic Waves on Cellular Spheroids

Abstract

High power electromagnetic signals can disrupt the functioning of electronic devices. As electromagnetism plays a role in cells homeostasis, such electromagnetic signals could potentially also alter some physiological processes. Herein we report on distinct biological parameters assessment after cellular spheroids exposure to high power electromagnetic signals, such as the ones used for defense applications. Signals effects were assessed in tumor cells spheroids and in normal human dermal fibroblasts spheroids, where macroscopic aspect, growth, plasma membrane integrity, induction of apoptosis, ATP content, and mitochondrial potential were investigated after spheroids exposure to high power electromagnetic signals. No significant effects were observed, indicating that 1.5 GHz narrowband electromagnetic fields with incident amplitude level of 40 kV/m, and 150 MHz moderate-band electric fields with an amplitude of 72.5 to approximately 200 kV/m, do not cause any significant alterations of assessed parameters.

High Power Electromagnetic Waves Exposure of Healthy and Tumor Bearing Mice: Assessment of Effects on Mice Growth, Behavior, Tumor Growth, and Vessel Permeabilization

“…In mentioned experiments [6,7], the electromagnetic exposure did not induce any measurable detrimental effects. Evidently, not observing an effect following a given number of biochemical tests performed in vitro does not allow us to ascertain that there are no biological effects at all.…”

“…Moreover, exposures of multicellular spheroids to such high-power electromagnetic signals did not affect the macroscopic aspect, spheroids' growth, cell membrane integrity, ATP content, and mitochondrial potential. In addition, signal exposure did not induce apoptosis of cells constituting the spheroids [7].…”

“…As limited exposure time to high-power electromagnetic environments is sufficient to disrupt the functioning of electronic devices, the HPEM exposures are generally of short duration and thus have a low radiated electromagnetic energy, which does not cause significant tissue heating. Among evaluated high-power electromagnetic signals, we have previously reported that wide-band (also termed meso-band signals) induced no detectable temperature increase in exposed samples (namely, in cell growing media in which biological cells and multicellular spheroids were exposed) [7]. Thus, under such circumstances, electromagnetic fields may rather induce cellular effects by non-thermal mechanisms.…”

“…In this context, we have previously evaluated the effects of high-power electromagnetic signals on different biological models of increasing complexity [6,7]. Among them, we used giant unilamellar vesicles, which are the simplest model, mimicking the cell membrane; normal cells (fibroblasts, isolated from a healthy skin biopsy) as well as cancer cells (human colon carcinoma HCT-116 cell line) [6]; and multicellular spheroids made of fibroblasts or cancer cells [7], which are a model mimicking small avascular tumors [8].…”

“…Decreased animal growth is thus regarded as a pillar variable in both acute and chronic toxicity studies. As a further step to experiments performed on giant unilamellar vesicles and living cells [6,7], the aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of HPEM signals-narrow-band and wide-band high-power electromagnetic waves-on living animals. In this context, we studied the exposure of healthy and tumor-bearing mice.…”