The Anti-androgenic Effect of Continuous Intake of Microwave Exposed Food on Swiss Albino Mice

Microwaves are electromagnetic waves with wavelengths ranging from as long as one meter to as short as one millimeter. Microwaves also have other subtle (athermal) effects, but the heating effect is the best understood. The microwave oven cooks food using 2.45 GHz microwaves .In this study male albino mice were fed with the fixed amount of food exposed to the microwave radiation for 10 minutes at 320C. The food was given as their normal dietary intake for 2 week, 3 week, 4 week, 4 week recovery to 3 groups namely experimental, control and sham. It was observed that the level of cholesterol showed significant increase in experimental and sham group as compared to the control group but the increase in sham is comparatively lesser than experimental and simultaneously the level of testosterone showed the significant decline in the same pattern .The decline in testosterone may be because of increased amount of cholesterol as cholesterol is known to be a precursor in androgen synthesis in the testis, its enhanced level can be co-related with the inhibition of synthesis of testosterone leading to infertility.