the blood brain barrier; are blood vessels different in the brain so medicine can’t get in when it could cross into other tissue from blood elsewhere in the body?
In: Biology
Yes! Other blood vessels can have slight gaps between each of the cells in the vessel wall, but there are very tight junctions in the vessel walls of the blood brain barrier to limit the molecules that can enter.
This makes it more difficult to get some medicines into the brain. Some very small molecules can enter the brain by diffusion and some molecules can be picked up by transporter proteins on the blood brain barrier and carried across.
Attaching medicines to liposomes (fat-based carrier molecules) also lets medicines travel through the barrier to the brain; I think this is the world of nanomedicine which seems to be the future of drug delivery!
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