Mitigating recurrent Urinary tract infections using neutrophil activation by a low frequency electromagnetic field exposure: A hypothesis

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

• Devastating rUTI has 11% prevalence in women. • The causative pathogen UPEC is the most occurring uropathogen in UTI. UPEC induces immune delay: it obstructs neutrophil activation and recruitment. • The immune delay creates a window for unhindered proliferation and establishment of an intracellular presence unreachable by neutrophils. • The established infection requires eventual and painful exfoliation of infected bladder endothelial cells. • Activating neutrophils by EMF early in an episode is hypothesised to mitigate rUTI by facilitating a fast and effective innate immune response. This paper hypothesises that activating neutrophils using a low-frequency electromagnetic field (LF-EMF) micro-stimulus could reduce immune delays. In recurrent urinary tract infections (rUTIs) that would mean less symptoms and less need for antibiotics. Uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) induces a temporary immune delay, allowing it to multiply to high bacterial load before the immune system responds. UPEC then also establishes an intracellular niche that protects a population of replicating bacteria from arriving phagocytes. A low-cost, low-burden treatment with a subtle electromagnetic stimulus has recently been shown to activate neutrophils in vivo in humans. The same stimulus has been shown in animal and in vitro experiments to immediately increase immune function, reduce mortality and tissue damage and increase vitality with an easy treatment of 30 min per day. We hypothesize that the selected Low Frequency Electromagnetic Field (LF-EMF) treatment will accelerate neutrophil activation and recruitment to the bladder, reducing immune delay. When used early in a UTI episode it can speed up the immune response, can therefore reduce both the maximum ‘size’ of the infection and of the immune response, and thereby reduce disease-symptoms and tissue-damage. By reducing the need for antibiotics, it can also help to mitigate the increase of antibiotic resistance.