How long before your competent? doctor gets research going to determine the best intervention to fix your blood brain barrier damage from your stroke? Oh, your doctor PLANS ON DOING NOTHING? RUN AWAY!
The latest here:
Repairing the Aging Blood-Brain Barrier: Real Possibilities
A study recently published in Nature has identified a key factor in the age-related breakdown of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and has demonstrated that this damage may be reversible, potentially paving the way for new therapeutic strategies for neurodegenerative and cerebrovascular diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and stroke.
The study, led by Sophia M. Shi, PhD, now a principal investigator at the Rowland Institute at Harvard but a PhD student at Stanford University during the study, focuses on the endothelial glycocalyx of the brain’s vasculature, also known as the brain’s “sugar shield.” This catchy moniker is given by the fact that the glycocalyx is a sugar-rich layer lining the luminal surface of endothelial cells in the brain vasculature.
Composed of proteoglycans, glycoproteins, and glycolipids, the glycocalyx — literally meaning “sugar coat” — is the first point of contact between the blood and the vasculature of the entire body, assisting in cell adhesion, providing protection, and helping control the movement of fluids and molecules between the bloodstream and surrounding tissues.
It also plays a critical role in maintaining the integrity of BBB.
“This blood-brain barrier or vascular dysfunction is a really common hallmark in aging but also a lot of age-related diseases like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, stroke,” Shi said. “We have these early changes in the vasculature that we can see.”
The research team demonstrated how a class of proteins of the glycocalyx known as mucin-domain glycoproteins is crucial for the barrier’s function, and its age- and disease-related decline is linked to a “leaky” BBB. The study showed how this decline can lead to brain hemorrhaging in mice.
“There’s a lot of proteins from the brain, like IgG [immunoglobulin G] and fibronectins, that will be toxic for the neurons if they leak. For years, people have found that during aging, one of the major problems people have been vascular damage from leaking. So people think that’s one of the reasons to look at [this leaking and vascular damage] in neuroendocrine disease,” said Lianchun Wang, MD, professor of molecular pharmacology and physiology at the Morsani School of Medicine at the University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida. Wang was not part of the study.
The Stanford study was able to restore the integrity of the glycocalyx, improving the barrier’s function, reducing leaking, and reducing neuroinflammation and cognitive deficits in the mice.
“We really wanted to see if we could ameliorate aspects of pathology and cognitive function in disease models to make it more disease relevant and potentially translational,” Shi added.
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