Sound waves to treat brain diseases

Scientists believe that they have found a new way of treating patients with serious brain diseases without the need of surgery. At present, patients who are diagnosed with serious brain diseases often have to undergo surgery, since many drugs cannot pass the blood-brain barrier (a protective layer around the brain that prevents drugs and other substances from passing into the brain). Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, USA have suggested that sound waves could play a key role in helping to get drugs into the brain. They have developed a method to open this barrier temporarily to allow the entry of drugs and gene therapy to different specific brain areas. They injected tiny protein bubbles into the bloodstream of three rabbits. These bubbles are widely used already to enable doctors to help ultrasound imaging of blood vessels. They discovered that bursting these bubbles could temporarily open the blood-brain barrier. They used an ultrasound beam to burst the bubbles in specific areas as a result this sent a shockwave up to the blood-brain barrier. This shockwave was found to be strong enough to allow large particles to enter the brain. Scientists hope that this technique could some day help in the delivery of drugs and genes to the brain. These could include powerful drugs to kill off tumours or genes to restore damaged cells. These results hold a great deal of promise and they could be used to help patients with a variety of diseases. Applications could include the treatment of cancer and different neurodegenerative diseases. However, further research is needed before this technique can be used.