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http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/580586/?sc=rsmn
Potential help for MS, Alzheimer, Brain Cancer patients?
Erika

Cornell University researchers may have solved a 100-year puzzle: How to safely open and close the blood-brain barrier so that therapies to treat Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis and cancers of the central nervous system might effectively be delivered. (Journal of Neuroscience, Sept. 14, 2011.)

“Big pharmaceutical companies have been trying for 100 years to find out how to traverse the blood-brain barrier and still keep patients alive,” said Bynoe, who with colleagues have patented the findings and have started a company, Adenios Inc., which will be involved in drug testing and preclinical trials.

It makes it sound like having a wide-open BBB, such as we may have in CCSVI in MS, is not a safe good thing!

Thanks for the link, Erika. I am not sure how the researchers think this will be useful in MS, since closing the BBB to leukocytes is a goal with disease-modifying drugs.

Interesting find. Thanks Erika!

Cece wrote:It makes it sound like having a wide-open BBB, such as we may have in CCSVI in MS, is not a safe good thing!

Thanks for the link, Erika. I am not sure how the researchers think this will be useful in MS, since closing the BBB to leukocytes is a goal with disease-modifying drugs.

The article acknowledged this point with MS.

The researchers also successfully delivered an anti-beta amyloid antibody across the blood-brain barrier and observed it binding to beta-amyloid plaques that cause Alzheimer’s in a transgenic mouse model. Similar work has been initiated for treating multiple sclerosis, where researchers hope to tighten the barrier rather than open it, to prevent destructive immune cells from entering and causing disease.

NHE

NHE wrote:

The researchers also successfully delivered an anti-beta amyloid antibody across the blood-brain barrier and observed it binding to beta-amyloid plaques that cause Alzheimer’s in a transgenic mouse model. Similar work has been initiated for treating multiple sclerosis, where researchers hope to tighten the barrier rather than open it, to prevent destructive immune cells from entering and causing disease.

NHE

Ok, that has potential.
Even after successful CCSVI treatment, we don't know how the BBB will react to improved flow or if it can tighten up again on its own. And not every CCSVI treatment is successful.

It reminds me of Marc's talk about a tertiary immune system set up within the brain itself. (A scenario where tightening the BBB would not help.) Nightmares....