Researchers at Saint Louis University have identified an interesting development in Alzheimers brain chemistry. In short, they’ve identified a way to actually get medication inside the brain.
You see there’s a layer surrounding the brain called the Blood-Brain-Barrier (BBB) that pretty much stops everything unusual from getting through to the brain. In normal healthy terms, this is a good thing. We don’t want our brains to get “sick” when we get a cold and the BBB stops bacteria and virus problems (most of them anyway) from reaching the sensitive brain. It keeps us ticking away even when our bodies are sick.
Researchers have identified a hormone (it’s actually called PACAP27 – a catchy little term) that is a general protector for the brain. What the researchers did in plain English was figured out a way to turn this protecting hormone “off” by adding another molecule to the material trying to get through the BBB.
They put a “key” into the drug so the drug could get through.
In their mouse trials, the researchers were able to disarm the BBB and deliver a treatment that had a positive effect on the brain functioning of the alzheimer’s-mouse subjects. The thinking is that this will allow other forms of treatment as well as Alzheimer’s brain therapies.
This material was originally printed in the Online Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism Read a summary here