Programmed cell death is an essential process in the development of the central nervous system (CNS) and is fundamental for the control of the final number of neurons and glial cells. Excessive cell death has been implicated in a growing number of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and multiple sclerosis as well as ischemic injury. We review the contribution of death ...

Aquaporins (AQPs) are a family of widely distributed membrane-inserted water channel proteins providing a pathway for osmotically-driven water, glycerol, urea or ions transport through cell membranes and mechanisms to control particular aspects of homeostasis. Beside their physiological expression patterns in Central Nervous System (CNS), it is conceivable that AQPs are also abnormally expresse...

Osteopontin (OPN) is a proinflammatory cytokine that can be secreted from many cells, including activated macrophages and T-lymphocytes, and is widely distributed in many tissues and cells. OPN, a key factor in tissue repairing and extracellular matrix remodeling after injury, is a constituent of the extracellular matrix of the central nervous system (CNS). Recently, the role of OPN in neurodeg...

Alcohol addiction is the most common drug addiction. Alcohol passes both the placenta as well as the blood-brain barrier and is in multiple ways neurotoxic. Liver diseases and other systemic alcohol-related diseases cause secondary damage to the CNS. Especially in adolescents, even a single episode of severe alcohol intoxication (“binge drinking”) may result in life-threatening neurological con...

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) provides both anatomical and physiological protection for the central nervous system (CNS), strictly regulating the entry of many substances and blood borne cells into the nervous tissue. Increased understanding of how the unique microenvironment in the CNS influences the BBB is crucial for developing novel therapeutic approaches to CNS diseases. In this review, we...

The gut and brain form the gut-brain axis through bidirectional nervous, endocrine, and immune communications. Changes in one of the organs will affect the other organs. Disorders in the composition and quantity of gut microorganisms can affect both the enteric nervous system and the central nervous system (CNS), thereby indicating the existence of a microbiota-gut-brain axis. Due to the intric...

Although viruses have been implicated in central nervous system (CNS) diseases of unknown etiology, including multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the reproducible identification of viral triggers in such diseases has been largely unsuccessful. Here, we explore the hypothesis that viruses need not replicate in the tissue in which they cause disease; specifically, that a periphe...

Epilepsy is a chronic disease affects CNS in various ages. WHO estimates 50 million people are suffering from epilepsy worldwide which make it a serious prevalent problem among neurological diseases. Intractable epilepsy (IE) affects about 20-30% of epileptic patients who failed to be seizure - free after antiepileptic drug (AED) consumption. Although many AEDs now are available for epilepsy tr...

: Quantum dots (QDs) are nanoparticles (NPs) with electronic and optical properties such as emitting bright light fluorescence. They also carry specific characters photostability, high quantum yield, emission, size-turnable. Nowadays, a great interest is given to the extensive use of theranostic-NPs for sensing imaging, well drug delivery. Moreover, QDs may yield potential diagnosis treatment v...