For two years, the interdisciplinary Project IGNITE has followed 1,000 pregnant individuals and their children to learn more about what role environmental factors play in preterm birth, poor pregnancy outcomes, and social and emotional development. April 2020 was a confusing and uncertain time. Just weeks after the emergence of the first U.S. cases of COVID-19,For two years, the interdisciplinary Project IGNITE has followed 1,000 pregnant individuals and their children to learn more about what role environmental factors play in preterm birth, poor pregnancy outcomes, and social and emotional development. April 2020 was a confusing and uncertain time. Just weeks after the emergence of the first U.S. cases of COVID-19, » The FINANCIAL News Health&Beauty
The immune link between a leaky blood-brain barrier and schizophrenia upenn.edu - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from upenn.edu Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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IMAGE: A genetic condition known as 22q.11.2 deletion syndrome is associated with an increased risk of schizophrenia. A Penn Vet-led team found that a leaky blood-brain barrier, allowing inappropriate immune involvement. view more
Credit: Courtesy of Jorge Iván Alvarez
Like a stern bodyguard for the central nervous sytem, the blood-brain barrier keeps out anything that could lead to disease and dangerous inflammation at least when all is functioning normally.
That may not be the case in people with schizophrenia and other mental disorders, suggest new findings from a team led by researchers from the School of Veterinary Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine, and Children s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). In these individuals, a more permissive barrier appears to allow the immune system to get improperly involved in the central nervous system, the researchers showed. The inflammation that arises likely contributes to the clinical manifestations of neuropsychi
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For the past pandemic year, everyone has been worried about somebody, it seems.
Dr. Wanjiku Njoroge has been worried about new mothers in particular, and the potential long-term consequences of living against the backdrop of COVID-19.
“Our immediate concern is not just the mom’s mental health,” said Njoroge, “but how that mom’s health is impacting their baby … and so we’re trying to understand if there are resources that families have access to or that we can put into place that will help.”
Along with Sara Kornfield, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Njoroge belongs to IGNITE, a multidisciplinary research group that represents a collaboration between the Lifespan Brain Institute (LiBi), which studies how the brain and behavior develop and change over time and in response to different illnesses, and Penn’s Maternal and Child Health Research Center. Njoroge is an infant/preschoo