this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2024
42 points (100.0% liked)

Science

13006 readers
6 users here now

Studies, research findings, and interesting tidbits from the ever-expanding scientific world.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:


Be sure to also check out these other Fediverse science communities:


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

It's a blood vessel bypass to the whole brain, the BBB is between blood vessels inside the brain and brain tissue.

The implication for drugs, is in drug research: normally a drug will get spread all over the body, particularly passing through the liver, which metabolizes all it can, followed by the kidneys, which piss out all they can... so it isn't easy to estimate how much of a given drug actually gets to the brain.

With a bypass, they can inject drugs directly into the brain, and see how they work without "interference" from the rest of the body.