Mobiles make you senile shocker

A new study has re-ignited the controversial question of whether mobile phones are harmful to users.

The US government research concentrates on whether radiation can affect the blood supply to the brain. Its findings contradict previously inconclusive research, which has focused solely on whether mobile phones can cause cancer in the human brain.

The study found that exposure to microwave radiation emitted by GSM phones and other wireless home and office technology is capable of breaking down the 'blood-brain' barrier, a permeable network of capillaries that allows essential substances such as glucose to permeate the brain and fuel its metabolism.

This breakdown releases a protein called albumin that can trigger the destruction of cells, resulting in reduced brain capacity and possibly inducing premature senility.

And although the research is still in its infancy, it is thought that the effects of the release of albumin are irreversible and may even promote other brain diseases.

Dr Leif Salford, a neurosurgeon from the Department of Neurosurgery at Lund University in Sweden, conducted the research using laboratory rats. He suggested that long-term use of mobile handsets could indeed have potentially harmful long-term effects.

"The voluntary exposure of the brain to microwaves from mobile phones by one-fourth of the world's population has been called the largest human biologic experiment ever," he said.

The research also suggests that the effect of the breakdown of the blood-brain barrier may be particularly harmful to teenagers due to their extended phone use.

Dr Salford concluded: "We cannot exclude that after some decades of (often) daily use, a whole generation of users may suffer negative effects."