Cytoprotective Effect of 120 Hz Electromagnetic Fields on Early Hepatocarcinogenesis: Experimental and Theoretical Findings

Abstract

Carcinogenesis induced chemically produces mutations affecting standard cells' behavior. An electrophilic attack on DNA result as the primary characteristic. Once xenobiotics are administrated to mammals they suffer a metabolic activation in the liver through cytochrome P450 (CYP450) enzymes, converting them to toxic compounds, generating oxidative stress (OS), and bursting electrophiles near the site of oxidation. CYP450 are electron carrier proteins that generate spin-correlated radical pair (RP) intermediaries. An extremely low-frequency electromagnetic field (ELF-EMF) can modulate the spin-flip conversion between singlet and triplet spin states of the RP populations, modifying the product formation during their metabolization. Experimentally, we induce hepatic cancer chemically; we found that ELF-EMF inhibits both the number and area of preneoplastic lesions by more than 50%. Furthermore, theoretically, we develop a quantum mechanical model based on the RP mechanism (RPM) in the Haberkorn approximation to explain the cytoprotective effects of ELF-EMF. Here, we review the status of the action's mechanism of ELF-EMF on our research on early hepatocarcinogenesis.