As you all may know the blood-brain barrier works as high security gate against unknown intruders. One may think, great my brain has its own defense mechanism against potential threats, well that is true but it also has its drawbacks. There are cases in which the blood brain barrier may be penetrated which include high blood pressure, high concentrations of a certain substance in the blood stream, radiation and infection among others. Otherwise anything that wishes to proceed into the brain must be lipid soluble, not highly charged, and not too large.
On the other assuming the brain is already damaged it is difficult to treat the problem directly if the blood brain barrier blocks all our efforts. For example, illnesses such as Alzheimer's, brain cancer and multiple sclerosis are all difficult to treat because the barrier blocks the medicine. However a
breakthrough has been made.
Although it is only the beginning of finding a way of better treating patients with these illnesses. There is still a lot of research to be done.
This picture show a capillary surrounded by an astrocytic glial membrane.
Interesting topic, did you know that beside the diseases that you listed, there is also the possibility to acquire worms by contaminated food. There are several animals from which people can acquire the worm. For example, pigs, cows, chickens just to name a few. Another fact is that a lot of people have worms but they do not even know that this is quite real.
ReplyDeletehere is a link to a topic related to worms in the brain
ReplyDeletehttp://discovermagazine.com/2012/jun/03-hidden-epidemic-tapeworms-in-the-brain
It is extremely interesting how our blood brain barrier protects us. Perhaps it does have some drawbacks but I think that if we had to list the pros and cons there would definitely be more pros. Medicine advances very quickly and hopefully our experts in the field can find a way to treat these diseases and find away around the blood brain barrier.
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