Page 29 - Engineering Penn State Magazine: Fall/Winter 2020
P. 29

  Research
 HEALTH
  Unlocking the PTSD puzzle by Jamie Oberdick
A team of Penn State and University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine researchers is attempting to answer a question that has long puzzled experts.
 Exploring the link between pollution and neurological disease
by A’ndrea Elyse Messer
A consensus is building that air pollution can cause neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, but how fine, sooty particles cause problems in the brain is still an unanswered question. Now a team of Penn State researchers, using mice, has found a possible way, but more research is still needed.
The researchers looked at how cerebrospinal fluid, the liquid that flows around the brain and spinal cord, flows out through the nose, and what happens when the flow of fluid is stopped.
“More and more it is realized that it does not just cushion the brain, but may also transfer stuff out of
the brain and spinal column area.”
“There has been a lot of interest in understanding cerebrospinal fluid movement in the last five years,” said Patrick Drew, Huck Distinguished Associate Professor of Neural Engineering and Neurosurgery. “More and more it is realized that it does not just cushion the brain, but may also transfer stuff out of the brain and spinal column area.”
The researchers suggest in a recent issue of eLife, “that damage to olfactory sensory neurons (such as from air pollution) could contribute to altered CSF turnover and flow, providing a potential mechanism for neurological disease.” They also state that “reduced CSF turnover may be a contributing factor to the buildup of toxic metabolites and proteins that cause neurodegenerative disorders.” n
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Why do some individuals suffer post- traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after experiencing trauma, and others do not?
The research, led by Nanyin Zhang, professor of biomedical engineering and Lloyd & Dorothy Foehr Huck Chair in Brain Imaging at Penn State, explores whether individual vulnerability to PTSD is due to pre- existing conditions or to a response to trauma exposure.
The team used the predator scent model of PTSD
in rats and longitudinal design, which involves repeated observations of the same subject over a period of time.
“The outcomes of the research can potentially be translated to human studies,” Zhang said. “For instance, a biomarker predicting a vulnerability to stress-induced disorders will help determine the risk of assigning an individual to a highly stressful environment, such as combat.” n
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