This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Knowledge & Support Community

Capillaries are tiny blood vessels that branch out from the ends of arteries and deliver blood to tissues. Normally only wide enough for one red blood cell to fit through at a time, the capillaries that create the caverns in the brain become wide enough to accommodate up to 100 red blood cells.

"It's like taking a capillary and blowing on it like a balloon," Awad said. The blown-up capillaries can ooze or leak blood and exert pressure on the brain.

Normal endothelial cells in a dish adhere to one another and form tubes. But the cells missing the CCM1 and CCM2 genes did not stick to one another and leaked. The researchers discovered that the proteins made by the CCM1 and CCM2 genes help stabilize cells by keeping other proteins that can increase the leakiness, particularly a protein known by the acronym ROCK, in check.

Cece wrote:This is why I hesitate to rail against Big Pharma, because for all the shady financial-gain non-patient-oriented ethics, we could still really use Big Pharma to be developing pharmaceuticals with the new insights of CCSVI in mind.