Feb 13, 2017
The blood brain barrier is the last layer of cells between what's in your blood and the extracellular fluid around your brain cells.
You're born with it! It's main job is filtration.
Permeability: how easily something can pass through a layer without work
Rabies is a virus that is small and can get through the blood
brain barrier but the immune system cells, antibodies from the
vaccine, and medicines can't.
HIV encephalopathy is caused when a mutation of the HIV gets into
the brain and use brain cells to replicate (rather than the
well-known T-cells of the immune system). There is also a
rare symptom of HIV called HIV-associated dementia.
microchimerisms - Pregnancy causes the permeability of many areas of the body to change, and this includes the BBB.
Drugs that have central nervous system effects (good) or side effects (bad) cross the BBB. See what you know of different medications and what job they're supposed to do and what negative side effects they cause and see if you can guess if they cross the BBB.
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Music Credits: “Radio Martini” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/