# RF-037 — LTE effects on sound-evoked cortical activity during experimental inflammation

Why this matters
An inflammatory challenge changed how rats' hearing-related brain cells responded to LTE exposure. In the challenged animals, sound responses weakened and stronger sounds were needed to evoke them. This gives susceptibility a concrete experimental form; recordings from anaesthetised rats do not establish hearing loss in people.

Id: RF-037

Author: Souffi et al.

Full Authors: Samira Souffi; Julie Lameth; Quentin Gaucher; Délia Arnaud-Cormos; Philippe Lévêque; Jean-Marc Edeline; Michel Mallat

Year: 2022

Title: Exposure to 1800 MHz LTE electromagnetic fields under proinflammatory conditions decreases the response strength and increases the acoustic threshold of auditory cortical neurons

Journal: Scientific Reports

Citation: Samira Souffi; Julie Lameth; Quentin Gaucher; Délia Arnaud-Cormos; Philippe Lévêque; Jean-Marc Edeline; Michel Mallat. Exposure to 1800 MHz LTE electromagnetic fields under proinflammatory conditions decreases the response strength and increases the acoustic threshold of auditory cortical neurons. Scientific Reports. 2022;12(1):4063. doi:10.1038/s41598-022-07923-9.

Doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-07923-9

Pmid: 35260711

Topic: Susceptibility and neural function

Verification Group: Original text reviewed

Record Role: Original text reviewed

Featured: True

Exposure: Single 2-hour head-only LTE-1800 MHz exposure under ketamine/xylazine anaesthesia. Mean brain SAR 0.37±0.23 W/kg; auditory cortex 0.50±0.08 W/kg (model SD). FDTD and homogeneous-phantom temperature-rise dosimetry differed by <30%. Heating pad maintained body temperature around 37°C.

Design: Adult male Wistar rats. Electrophysiology in four groups of five rats: LTE/sham with and without LPS250µg/kg i.p.24 h earlier. Separate LPS histology n=5-6/group. Exposure-zero sham; waveform trigger and histological analyses blinded.

Finding: In LPS-treated rats, LTE exposure reduced sound-evoked response strength and increased cortical sound thresholds. The same principal response-strength and threshold effects were not seen in healthy rats. Microglial morphology was not significantly changed.

Statistics: LPS groups: total tone-evoked response strength P=.0017; response at best frequency P=.0445; vocalization-response strength/reliability P=.043. Analyses used electrode-array positions to address nesting, with 25-26 positions but only 5 animals/group.

Boundary: An acute anaesthetized inflammatory animal model; cortical physiology does not demonstrate clinical deafness or human EHS. Small animal-level n and analyses based on multiple electrode positions leave uncertainty over full between-animal generalizability. No human-limit compliance conclusion from cortex SAR.

Related: French ANSES/Paris-Sud-Limoges neuroinflammation programme; linked to earlier GSM experiments and Lameth 2025 RF-021. Journal DOI and preprint 10.1101/2022.01.13.476168 are one work, not independent evidence.

Protection Question: Can an inflammatory state change vulnerability to exposure? The contrast with healthy rats makes susceptibility testable, while anaesthesia, small animal numbers and electrode-level analyses limit inference about people or hearing loss.

Access: Original full methods/results, Table 1,Figures 2,4-5 and disclosures reviewed via Scite fulltext and PMC original XML.

Locator: Methods/Animals,LTE head exposure,Electrophysiological recordings,Statistical analysis;Table 1;Fig 2;Fig 4 versus Fig 5.

Notice: No editorial notice surfaced in the Scite/primary-record checks used for this record; this is not a comprehensive clean-bill certification.

Funding: ANSES French National Research Program for Environmental and Occupational Health 2018/2RF/16; Investissements d'avenir ANR-10-IAIHU-06.

Conflicts: Authors declare no competing interests in original article.

Source Url: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-07923-9

Retrieval Links: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-07923-9 | https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8902282/ | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35260711/

Verification Date: 2026-10-20