Traumatic Brain Injury and Blood-Brain Barrier Cross-Talk

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury, often referred to as the "silent epidemic," is a nondegenerative, non-congenital insult to the brain due to a blow or penetrating object that disrupts the function of the brain leading to permanent or temporary impairment of cognition, physical and psychosocial functions. Traumatic brain injury usually has poor prognosis for long-term treatment and is a major cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide; approximately 10 million deaths and/or hospitalizations annually are directly related to traumatic brain injury. Traumatic brain injury involves primary and secondary insults. Primary injury occurs during the initial insult, and results from direct or indirect force applied to the physical structures of the brain. Secondary injury is characterized by longer-term degeneration of neurons, glial cells, and vascular tissues due to activation of several proteases, glutamate and pro-inflammatory cytokine secretion. In addition, there is growing evidence that the blood-brain barrier is involved in the course of traumatic brain injury pathophysiology and has detrimental effects on the overall pathology of brain trauma, as will be discussed in this work.

Increased miR-21-3p in Injured Brain Microvascular Endothelial Cells after Traumatic Brain Injury Aggravates Blood–Brain Barrier Damage by Promoting Cellular Apoptosis and Inflammation through Targeting MAT2B

“…Molecular therapy is a new research hotspot in recent years. The representative drugs, erythropoietin and progesterone, have been reported widely to alleviate BBB damage in animal models, 4,14 but phase III clinical trials failed to find their therapeutic effects in patients with TBI. 15,16 Statins, such as atrovastatin (NCT02024373) and rosuvastatin (NCT00990028), which have a similar function in animals with TBI, are still in early clinical trials.…”

Nanofiber mat spinal cord dressing-released glutamate impairs blood-spinal cord barrier

“…Glutamate is also assigned an important role in the pathomechanisms of many CNS pathologies, e.g., of epilepsy, ischemia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and in acute brain or spinal cord injury [2,26,28,30].…”

Traumatic brain injury and methamphetamine: A double-hit neurological insult

“…There is a growing body of evidence describing the blood-brain barrier (BBB) disruption following TBI [86,87]. This process is thought to be biphasic.…”