Effect of electromagnetic fields on several CD markers and transcription and expression of CD4

We carried out flow cytometric analysis for multiparametric evaluation of c ell surface markers related to cellular functions. Specifically, we studied the expression of CD4, CD8, CD3, CD16, CD9, HLA-DR, and CD14 macrophage re ceptors expression and cell cycle progression on cells exposed to ELF-EMF I n addition, we tested the effects of ELF-EMF on CD4 mRNA protein transcript ion and translation and the cell-cycle progression using an immunofluoresce nce method. Our data show that same CD surface marker expression are weakly influenced by electromagnetic fields, with no differences between cells exposed or not exposed to ELF-EMFs. However, when the CD4 protein generation was studied, an indication of protein production was found in lymphocytes exposed to EL F-EMF, as evidenced by immunofluorescence, Western blotting and RT-PCR anal ysis. CD16 and CD14 expression were affected by EMF exposure at all limes s tudied (24, 48, 72 h). The results obtained with cell cycle analysis show t hat after 48 h of exposure to ELF-EMF PHA-activated and not activated cells in S phase increase with respect to non-exposed cells. The findings from t his study demonstrate that under our defined experimental conditions there is evidence that ELF-EMF has a slight effect on CD4, CD14 and CD16 receptor expression while the other CD receptors are nor affected.