While a first in the medical world with the development of technology, one of those firsts came today. Experts from the Institute of Neurosciences in Spain have succeeded in imaging, for the first time in history, ‘neuroinflammation’, a condition of inflammation of the nerve tissue in the brain. Moreover, the infection was observed with high detail.
While neuroinflammation cannot be visualized with an MRI device under normal conditions, specialists resorted to a special process at this point. Experts discovered that diffusion-weighted MRI can differentially detect the activation and development of microglia and astrocytes, two types of brain cells that are at the source of neuroinflammation.
So what does this discovery mean?
The new discovery, made possible by an innovative method by experts, has the potential to be the first basis for research and changing the course of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases. Because one of the sources of these diseases and one of the reasons for their progression is chronic inflammation that occurs with the continuous activation of these two brain cells.
In addition, the experts demonstrated that their newly developed technique is sensitive and specific for detecting inflammation with and without neurodegeneration so that both conditions can be distinguished. Finally, he shared that the technique makes it possible to distinguish between inflammation and demyelination features of multiple sclerosis (MS disease).
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