Investigators led by a team at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) that previously discovered tiny channels in the skull have now found that cerebrospinal fluid (also known as “brain water”) can exit the brain into the skull’s bone marrow through these channels. The discovery, which is published in Nature Neuroscience, is important because immune cells produced in the spongy tissue of the skull’s bone marrow can screen the cerebrospinal fluid for signs of infection and other threats to the brain…
Nahrendorf and his colleagues, including lead author and MGH research fellow Fadi E. Pulous, PhD, also found that bacteria that cause meningitis (inflammation in the meninges) travel through the channels and enter the skull’s bone marrow. This causes cells in the bone marrow to produce more immune cells to combat the invasion. A better understanding of these processes may lead to new strategies to treat meningitis.
Massachusetts General Hospital, “New insights on the importance of skull channels for brain health” at ScienceDaily (May 2, 2022)
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