Effect of cell phone use on salivary components; a review of literature

Mobile phones have been increasingly used in the past decade and have become a cultural instrument. There is a great concern over the harmful effects of electromagnetic and radiofrequency waves as well as microwaves generated by mobile phones and their telecommunication stations on health. The saliva plays an important role in preserving oral homeostasis as the first defensive line against the microbial invasion which protects oral mucosa mechanically and immunologically. A search was run in PubMed, Goggle Scholar, Medline, and Web of Science databases using the following keywords: cell phone, mobile phone, antioxidant profile, saliva, oxidative stress, interleukin, and inflammation. Sixty-five published articles were identified. Studies on the use of cell phones as educational aids, the use of immune histochemistry on salivary glands, or the evaluation of saliva in individuals with specific conditions, such as the use of orthodontic brackets, were excluded. In addition, duplicate articles are eliminated, and finally, 14 articles were included in the present study. Nowadays mobile phone is very popular, causing concern about the effect it has on people's health. Parotid salivary glands are in close contact with a cell phone while talking with the phone and the possibility of being affected by them; so this study was designed to investigate the effect of cell phone use on salivary components.