Reviewing What is Known of the Biochemistry of Blood-Brain Barrier Dysfunction in Aging

Blood vessels passing through the central nervous system are sheathed by specialized cells that form the blood-brain barrier. The barrier controls the passage of cells and molecules into the brain. This protection is essential to the normal function of the brain, which operates in a biological environment that is very different to that of the result of the body. Unfortunately, and like all systems in the body, the blood-brain barrier deteriorates with age. This allows harmful molecules and cells to leak into the brain, provoking a damaging state of chronic inflammation in brain tissue. Inflammation is thought to be an important component of age-related neurodegenerative conditions, and to the degree that blood-brain barrier dysfunction contributes to the overall state of inflammation in brain tissue, it can be considered one of the important causes of neurodegeneration. What to do about this problem? There is the question. The blood-brain barrier is a complex system, and thus its failure is also complex, when considered in detail. As is the case for much of aging, it is presently somewhere between challenging and impossible to accurately assess the relative importance of the many changes, failures, and forms of damage that can be measured in the cells of the blood-brain barrier. Even determining the direction of cause and effect for a few of these line items can be a hard task, an undertaking of years for teams of scientists. This is why the easier path to knowledge is...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs