A new study has found a link between mobile phone use and cardiovascular disease – a finding that should concern all 8 billion-plus users. The study, by Yanjun Zhang and team, looked at data on over 444,000 people from Britain. They compared mobile phone use with various aspects of heart disease and factored in sleep and mental health problems. The researchers found that mobile phone use was, in fact, related to heart disease.

‘[We first demonstrated that regular mobile phone use was associated with a significantly increased risk of incident CVD [cardiovascular disease],’ the authors said. ‘In regular mobile phone users, a longer weekly mobile phone usage time was related to a significantly increased risk of incident CVD and each component of it, including incident CHD, stroke, HF [heart failure], and AF [atrial fibrillation].’

They also found that people who used mobile phones for longer each week had a higher risk of having more carotid intimamedia thickness (CIMT). This is important because CIMT is a measure of carotid atherosclerosis – which occurs when arteries become blocked with plaque, increasing the risk of stroke.

How could mobile phone radiation cause cardiovascular damage?

They authors say, ‘Mobile phones emit radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMFs), which could induce hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis deregulation, inflammatory reaction, and oxidative stress, and therefore are expected to affect various organs, such as heart and blood vessels.’

The risk of cardiovascular disease was higher in mobile phone users who smoked and had diabetes. The authors suggest this might be because mobile phone use, smoking and diabetes all cause oxidative stress.

Another result of the study was that mobile phone use and cardiovascular disease were also linked to poor sleep, psychological distress and neurosis.

Interestingly, previous research has shown a link between mobile phone use and depression and sleep problems.

The authors of the current study say, ‘If further confirmed, this study encourages measures to decrease the time spent on mobile phones for promoting the primary prevention of CVD events, such as facilitating the mobile phones’ function of displaying and reminding mobile phone users of mobile phone usage time.’

They also suggest that addressing sleep and mental health problems could help.

Zhang, Yanjun et al, Regular Mobile Phone Use and Incident Cardiovascular Diseases: Mediating Effects of Sleep Patterns, Psychological Distress, and Neuroticism, Canadian Journal of Cardiology in press, onlinecjc.ca/article/S0828 282X(24)00437-9/fulltext