Nelly - brain pharmacology - Wheldon/zith

[Guest guest]

For those interested in the question of whether experiments on

healthy mammals might not represent the access of macrolides to the

brain in inflammatory disease states like MS, this web page has a

couple refs that might be of interest:

http://users.ahsc.arizona.edu/davis/pathophysiology.htm

But, as a caution, it may be pretty tough to resolve with certainty

a question like this without a directly applicable experiment,

because of all the factors involved, for instance the efflux pumps

that export many molecules from brain endothelial cells out back

into the blood.

On a semi-related note, theres one more complication to brain

pharmocology that I never knew of: the interface of the blood and

cerebrospinal fluid at the choroid plexus, and the way the CSF

" washes " the brain.

It seems the CSF system acts to remove (partially) many drugs that

reach the brain via the vasculature - but it also provides a

critical opening for at least one drug, AZT.

http://users.ahsc.arizona.edu/davis/csf.htm

http://users.ahsc.arizona.edu/davis/csfanatomy.htm