Researchers identify how inflammation spreads through the brain after injury
The findings were published today in a study in the Journal of Neuroinflammation . This new understanding has the potential to transform how brain inflammation is understood, and, ultimately, how it is treated. The researchers showed that microparticles derived from brain inflammatory cells are markedly increased in both the brain and the blood following experimental traumatic brain injury (TBI). These microparticles carry pro-inflammatory factors that can activate normal immune cells, making them potentially toxic to brain neurons. Injecting such microparticles into the brains of uninjured animals creates progressive inflammation at both the injection site and eventually in more distant sites. Research has found that neuroinflammation o ften goes on for years after TBI, causing chronic brain damage. The researchers say that the microparticles may play a key role in this process. Chronic inflammation has been increasingly implicated in the progressive cell loss and neur...