Have you forgotten where you laid your keys? Ever wondered where you had parked your car? Or having trouble remembering the name of the new neighbor? Unfortunately, these things seem to get worse as one gets older. A big question for researchers is where does benign forgetfulness end and true disease begin?
One of the keys to having a healthy brain at any age is having a healthy blood-brain barrier, a complex interface of blood vessels that run through the brain. Researchers reviewed more than 150 articles to look at what happens to the blood-brain barrier as we age.
Whether the changes to the blood-brain barrier alters brain function is still up for debate. But research shows the blood-brain barrier leaks as we age, and we lose cells called pericytes.
“It turns out very little is known how the blood-brain barrier ages,” said lead author William Banks, a gerontology researcher at the University of Washington School of Medicine and at the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System. “It’s often hard to tell normal aging from early disease.”
