Use Of Cell Phones During Pregnancy May Not Hamper Baby's Brain: Study

Would-be mothers who have been worrying about the adverse effect of excessive cell phone use on their newborn’s health and brain development can sit back and relax. New research has found that using mobile phones during pregnancy will not harm the baby’s brain.

According to the latest study published in the journal BMC Public Health on Monday, using cell phones during pregnancy is unlikely to have a negative impact on your baby’s neurodevelopment. The study provided further evidence that exposure to radio frequency electromagnetic fields linked to the maternal use of cell phones during pregnancy is not associated to neurodevelopment among children.

The study which analyzed data from a large Norwegian population-based pregnancy cohort study called “MoBa,” disclosed that children born to mothers who used mobile phone had a 27 per cent lower risk of developing lower sentence complexity, 14 per cent lower risk of incomplete grammar and 31 per cent lower risk of having moderate language delay at age of three years as compared to the babies of mothers who reported that they did not use mobile phones during pregnancy.

The study used data from MoBa cohort study which included 45,389 mother-child pairs whose self-reported questionnaire data was available to the researchers regarding maternal mobile phone usage and then neurodevelopment follow ups of their children at the ages of three and five years.

The MoBa study from which the data was collected is considered to be among the largest studies worldwide that are said to follow families from birth and then collects information and data on several important factors which might affect human health and thus lead to the development of a disease, according to MedicalResearch.com.

Dr. Eleni Papadopoulou, the lead author from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, said: "The concern for harm to the fetus caused by radio frequency electromagnetic fields, such as those emitted by mobile phones, is mainly driven by reports from experimental animal studies with inconsistent results. Even though this is an observational study, our findings do not support the hypothesis of adverse effects on child's language, communication and motor skills due to the use of the mobile phone during pregnancy," according to Medical Xpress.

The study found that the more women used mobile phones during pregnancy, their children had a lower risk of low motor skills score at three years as compared to the non-users.

Professor Jan Alexander, the senior author from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, said: "Our investigation revealed for the first time that maternal mobile phone use may actually have a positive impact. More specifically, mobile phone use in pregnancy was associated with lower risk of the child having low language and motor skills at 3 years of age. Although we adjusted for important socio-demographic characteristics as well as maternal personality and psychological factors, we think this protective effect is more likely to be explained by factors not measured in this study having an impact on the mobile phone use and child's neurodevelopment, rather than the maternal mobile phone use in itself."

The study stated: "Those women who talk a lot using their cell phones might also talk a lot to their child, explaining the association between heavy phone use and lack of reduced sentence complexity in the children. Hence enhanced maternal-child communication among cell phone users could explain our findings."