RESEARCH ARTICLE Improvement of Spatial Memory Disorder and Hippocampal Damage by Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields in an Alzheimer’s Disease Rat Model

Although some epidemiological investigations showed a potential association between long-term exposure of extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields (ELF-EMF) and Alz-heimer’s disease (AD), no reasonable mechanism can explain this association, and the re-lated animal experiments are rare. In this study, ELF-EMF exposure (50Hz 400µT 60d) combined with D-galactose intraperitoneal (50mg/kg, q.d., 42d) and Aβ25–35 hippocampal (5μl/unilateral, bilateral, single-dose) injection was implemented to establish a complex rat model. Then the effects of ELF-EMF exposure on AD development was studied by using the Morris water maze, pathological analysis, and comparative proteomics. The results showed that ELF-EMF exposure delayed the weight gain of rats, and partially improved cog-nitive and clinicopathologic symptoms of AD rats. The differential proteomic analysis results suggest that synaptic transmission, oxidative stress, protein degradation, energy metabo-lism, Tau aggregation, and inflammation involved in the effects mentioned above. There-fore, our findings indicate that certain conditions of ELF-EMF exposure could delay the development of AD in rats