Worried about affecting your child's neurodevelopment during pregnancy? Scientist: That's not the case

study, published in the open-access journal BMC Public Health, suggests that pregnant women who use mobile phones during pregnancy are less likely to have any adverse effects on their child's neurodevelopment. These findings provide further evidence that there is no necessary link between exposure of pregnant women to radio frequency electromagnetic fields due to the use of mobile phones and the neurodevelopment of the child.Dr Eleni Papadopoulou, lead author of the
study and from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, said: "The claim that radio frequency electromagnetic fields, which are radiated by mobile phones, can harm fetuses comes mainly from animal experiments with inconsistent results. Although our study is observational, our findings do not support the hypothesis that cell phone use during pregnancy adversely affects a child's language, communication and movement skills.
data analyzed by the researchers came from a large Norwegian population pregnancy queue study called MoBa, which contained a large amount of data collected from mothers and children during pregnancy and after child-rearing. The data used in this study were from 45,389 pairs of mothers/daughters, including self-declaration questionnaires filled out by mothers about cell phone use during pregnancy, and neurodevelopmental conditions in children 3 and 5 years of age.
, author of the paper and a professor at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, said: "Our research reveals for the first time that using a mobile phone during pregnancy may even have some positive effects. More specifically, using a mobile phone during pregnancy may reduce your child's risk of developing low levels of language and movement skills by the age of 3. We calibrated the results with important sociodebiotic characteristics such as economic conditions and the mother's personality, psychological factors, etc., but we believe that this protective effect is more likely to come from factors not discussed in this study that could affect cell phone use and the child's neurodevelopment, rather than just the mother's use of the phone during pregnancy.
researchers found that children born to mobile phone users were 14 percent less likely to use sentences, less complex grammar and 31 percent less likely to experience moderate language retardation at age 3 than mothers who didn't use them. They also found that children born to mobile phone users were 18 percent less likely to have low levels of motion skills at age 3 than those who did not use mobile phones. This beneficial effect persists even after excluding some of the relevant interfering factors, such as the socio-demographic characteristics mentioned above, and is related to the length of time the mother has reported using the mobile phone.
Professor Alexander, said: "Our large-scale study provides evidence that the use of mobile phones by pregnant women does not adversely affect fetal neurodevelopment. The beneficial effects of our findings should be interpreted with caution, as observational studies have some limitations, but our findings at least alleviate the concerns raised by mothers using mobile phones during pregnancy. (Source: Science.com)