Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.
Today's article talks about a thing I'm pretty sure isn't covered in most biology classes, yet is incredibly important when talking about autism, depression, anxiety, or even drugs: the blood-brain barrier.
"What the heck is that?" you might ask. It's kind of like a sieve. The brain and the bloodstream are connected, with this sheet of picky cells dividing them. The cells allow things like sugar and oxygen through, but they block germs and most drugs from messing with your brain. Which is good, because your brain is very fragile!
People with depression, autistic people, and others with more fragile systems can sometimes have weaker blood-brain barriers. When that's the case, the person's brain may not function as well as it should. It may be harder to think, or harder to think on a high level. Planning your day might be harder. It might feel like you're thinking through a fog.
Systemic inflammation can also weaken the blood-brain barrier, and that can be caused by being ill, having allergies, being asthmatic, eating dairy, and other things. So then more bad things get to your brain, and you do worse.
The point of this particular study is to note that the blood-brain barrier might be what your typical pharmaceutical regimen is missing. In some cases, depression might not be a neuron problem, it might simply be a "too much icky stuff getting into the brain" problem. So strengthening the blood-brain barrier would improve the person's wellbeing and happiness.
Granted, they've only done this study on mice, and mice are not humans. But it's an interesting avenue of study. I hope to see more on it in the very near future.
(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)
Today's article talks about a thing I'm pretty sure isn't covered in most biology classes, yet is incredibly important when talking about autism, depression, anxiety, or even drugs: the blood-brain barrier.
"What the heck is that?" you might ask. It's kind of like a sieve. The brain and the bloodstream are connected, with this sheet of picky cells dividing them. The cells allow things like sugar and oxygen through, but they block germs and most drugs from messing with your brain. Which is good, because your brain is very fragile!
People with depression, autistic people, and others with more fragile systems can sometimes have weaker blood-brain barriers. When that's the case, the person's brain may not function as well as it should. It may be harder to think, or harder to think on a high level. Planning your day might be harder. It might feel like you're thinking through a fog.
Systemic inflammation can also weaken the blood-brain barrier, and that can be caused by being ill, having allergies, being asthmatic, eating dairy, and other things. So then more bad things get to your brain, and you do worse.
The point of this particular study is to note that the blood-brain barrier might be what your typical pharmaceutical regimen is missing. In some cases, depression might not be a neuron problem, it might simply be a "too much icky stuff getting into the brain" problem. So strengthening the blood-brain barrier would improve the person's wellbeing and happiness.
Granted, they've only done this study on mice, and mice are not humans. But it's an interesting avenue of study. I hope to see more on it in the very near future.
(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)
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