PRB at Wayne State/DMC discover window of opportunity to prevent cerebral palsy

Public release date: 18-Apr-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Julie O'Connor julie.oconnor@wayne.edu 313-577-8845 Wayne State University - Office of the Vice President for Research

Researchers at the Perinatology Research Branch of the National Institutes of Health, located at the Wayne State University School of Medicine and the Detroit Medical Center, have demonstrated that a nanotechnology-based drug treatment in newborn rabbits with cerebral palsy (CP) enabled dramatic improvement of movement disorders and the inflammatory process of the brain that causes many cases of CP. The findings strongly suggest that there may be an opportunity immediately after birth for drug treatment that could minimize CP.

The study is the first to show that an anti-inflammatory drug delivered with a nanodevice can dramatically improve CP symptoms in an animal model.

The report, "Dendrimer-Based Postnatal Therapy for Neuroinflammation and Cerebral Palsy in a Rabbit Model," was published April 18 in the prestigious journal Science Translational Medicine, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"The key finding of this work is that early identification of neuroinflammation allows postnatal treatment," said Roberto Romero, M.D., D.Med.Sci., chief of the Perinatology Research Branch and an author of the study. "This suggests that there is a window of opportunity to prevent cerebral palsy, and that the condition may be preventable."

Cerebral palsy is a disorder of the developing brain that affects motor skills and muscle coordination, often not diagnosed until the age of two or three years in children. The United Cerebral Palsy Foundation, a national advocacy and support group, estimates that 764,000 children and adults in the United States have CP. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 100,000 babies born in the U.S. develop CP annually. A 2009 report by the CDC indicated the prevalence of the condition at 3.3 per 1,000 births. Worldwide, the CDC estimates the prevalence of CP births to range from 1.5 to 4 for every 1,000 births.

Risk factors for the condition include low birth weight and premature birth. Children born before the 32nd week of pregnancy are at high risk for developing CP. Intrauterine infection and/or inflammation is a major risk factor for CP.

Microglia - immune cells in the brain - play an important role in remodeling and growth during fetal and postnatal periods. Activation of these cells can cause an exaggerated inflammatory response, leading to brain injury and CP. Treatment is problematic because inflammation and the resulting injury can be spread throughout the brain's white matter. Transporting drugs across the blood-brain barrier also represents a challenge.

The PRB team hypothesized that it was possible to deliver a drug using a tiny device (or nanodevice) that would cross the blood-brain barrier and target the activated cells (microglia and astrocytes) in the brain involved in neuroinflammation.

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PRB at Wayne State/DMC discover window of opportunity to prevent cerebral palsy