The Effect of a Single 30-Min Long Term Evolution Mobile Phone-Like Exposure on Thermal Pain Threshold of Young Healthy Volunteers

Zsuzsanna Vecsei, György Thuróczy and István Hernádi
Additional contact information
Zsuzsanna Vecsei: Department of Non-ionizing Radiation, National Public Health Institute, H-1221 Budapest, Hungary
György Thuróczy: Department of Non-ionizing Radiation, National Public Health Institute, H-1221 Budapest, Hungary
István Hernádi: Department of Experimental Zoology and Neurobiology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Pécs, H-7624 Pécs, Hungary

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 9, 1-12

Abstract: Although the majority of mobile phone (MP) users do not attribute adverse effects on health or well-being to MP-emitted radiofrequency (RF) electromagnetic fields (EMFs), the exponential increase in the number of RF devices necessitates continuing research aimed at the objective investigation of such concerns. Here we investigated the effects of acute exposure from Long Term Evolution (LTE) MP EMFs on thermal pain threshold in healthy young adults. We use a protocol that was validated in a previous study in a capsaicin-induced hyperalgesia model and was also successfully used to show that exposure from an RF source mimicking a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) MP led to mildly stronger desensitization to repeated noxious thermal stimulation relative to the sham condition. Using the same experimental design, we did not find any effects of LTE exposure on thermal pain threshold. The present results, contrary to previous evidence obtained with the UMTS modulation, are likely to originate from placebo/nocebo effects and are unrelated to the brief acute LTE EMF exposure itself. The fact that this is dissimilar to our previous results on UMTS exposure implies that RF modulations might differentially affect pain perception and points to the necessity of further research on the topic.

Keywords: long term evolution; LTE; 4G; mobile phone; nociception; pain; thermal pain threshold (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/9/1849/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/9/1849/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:9:p:1849-:d:166053

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().