Tohoku J. Exp. Med., 2004, 202(2)

Absence of Mutagenic Effects of 2.45 GHz Radiofrequency Exposure in Spleen, Liver, Brain, and Testis of lacZ-Transgenic Mouse Exposed in Utero

TETSUYA ONO, YUSUKE SAITO, JUN4ICHIRO KOMURA, HIRONOBU IKEHATA, YOSHIAKI TARUSAWA,1 TOSHIO NOJIMA,1,2 KATSUO GOUKON,3 YOSHIFUMI OHBA,4 JIANQING WANG,5 OSAMU FUJIWARA5 and RISABURO SATO6

Department of Cell Biology, Graduate School of Medicine, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8575, 1Radio Environment Technology Research Laboratory, NTT DoCoMo, Inc., Yokosuka 239-8536, 2Division of Electronics and Information, Graduate School of Engineering, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-8628, 3Department of Applied Physics and Informatics, 4Department of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, Faculty of Engineering, Tohoku Gakuin University, Tagajo 980-8537, 5Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Nagoya 466-8555, and 6SATO RESEARCH Lab., Sendai 989-3204

A possible mutagenic effect of 2.45 GHz radiofrequency exposure was examined using lacZ-transgenic MutaTM mice. Pregnant animals were exposed intermittently at a whole-body averaged specific absorption rate of 0.71 W/kg (10 seconds on, 50 seconds off which is 4.3 W/kg during the 10 seconds exposure). Offspring that were exposed in utero for 16 hours a day, from the embryonic age of 0 to 15 days, were examined at 10 weeks of age. To minimize thermal effects, the exposure was given in repeated bursts of 10 seconds of exposure followed by 50 seconds of no exposure. Mutation frequencies at the lacZ gene in spleen, liver, brain, and testis were similar to those observed in non-exposed mice. Quality of mutation assessed by sequencing the nucleotides of mutant DNAs revealed no appreciable difference between exposed and non-exposed samples. The data suggest that the level of radiofrequency exposure studied is not mutagenic when administered in utero in short repeated bursts.

keywords —— radiofrequency field; fetal exposure; DNA alteration; mutation

© 2004 Tohoku University Medical Press

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Tohoku J. Exp. Med., 2004, 202, 93-103

Address for reprints: Tetsuya Ono, Ph.D., Department of Cell Biology, Graduate School of Medicine, Tohoku University, Seiryo-machi 2-1, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8575, Japan.

e-mail: tono@mail.tains.tohoku.ac.jp