IMR Press / FBS / Volume 13 / Issue 2 / DOI: 10.52586/S561
Open Access Review
A short review on the influence of magnetic fields on neurological diseases
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1 Institute for Anatomy, Medical Faculty, TU Dresden, 01307 Dresden, Germany
2 Schönblickstraße 95, 71272 Renningen, Germany, former member of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Stuttgart, Germany
*Correspondence: Richard.Funk@tu-dresden.de (Richard H. W. Funk)
Front. Biosci. (Schol Ed) 2021, 13(2), 181–189; https://doi.org/10.52586/S561
Submitted: 17 March 2021 | Revised: 28 June 2021 | Accepted: 14 July 2021 | Published: 3 December 2021
Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s). Published by BRI.
This is an open access article under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Abstract

This study reviews the use of magnetic and electromagnetic fields (EMF), pulsed electromagnetic fields (PEMF), and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease (AD), or Multiple Sclerosis (MS). The Introduction provides a review of EMF, PEMF, and TMS based on clinical observations. This is followed by a description of the basic principles of these treatments and a literature review on possible mechanisms describing the coupling of these treatments with biological responses. These response mechanisms include the cell membrane and its embedded receptors, channels and pumps, as well as signaling cascades within the cell and links to cell organelles. We also discuss the magnetic contribution to coupling EMF, as well as the recent finding of cryptochrome as a putative magnetosensor. Our conclusion summarizes the complex network of causal factors elicited by EMF such as those arising from the cell membrane via signaling cascades to radical oxygen species, nitric oxide, growth factors, cryptochromes and other mechanisms involving epigenetic and genetic changes.

Keywords
Parkinson’s disease
Alzheimer’s disease
Multiple sclerosis
EMF
PEMF
TMS
Figures
Fig. 1.
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