Blood-Brain Barrier Dysfunction Causes Chronic Inflammation and Neurodegeneration

Numerous lines of evidence point to the characteristic increase in chronic inflammation that takes place in old age to be of great importance in the progression of neurodegenerative conditions. A fair degree of that inflammation in the brain results from dysfunction of the blood-brain barrier, a layer of cells lining blood vessels in the central nervous system that normally acts to prevent unwanted and potentially harmful molecules and cells from entering the brain. The work reported here builds on more than a decade of investigation of the age-related decline of the blood-brain barrier, and consequent inflammation in the brain, to build a targeted therapy to damp down one very specific source of inflammatory signaling. This is no doubt far from the only mechanism leading to inflammation, and repairing the blood-brain barrier would be a better way forward than compensating for its decline, mechanism by mechanism through a long list of such mechanisms, but the results are nonetheless interesting. Scientists report that senile mice given an anti-inflammatory drug had fewer signs of brain inflammation and were better able to learn new tasks, becoming almost as adept as mice half their age. "We tend to think about the aged brain in the same way we think about neurodegeneration: Age involves loss of function and dead cells. But our new data tell a different story about why the aged brain is not functioning well: It is because of this "fog" of inflammatory load. But when y...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs