Who Say's Brain Cells Dont Multiply

Trieste, Italy -

Although in recent years numerous reports of neural plasticity have been made, little clinical evidence of this has been demonstrated in consistent systems that are highly reproducible.

In a recent paper (Sgubin et al. Activation of endogenous neural stem cells in the adult human brain following subarachnoid hemorrhage J Neurosci Res. 2007 Apr 23) a very interesting system was used to clinically demonstrate neural stem cell proliferation following injury.

Deep brain samples were extracted from 10 patients suffering from subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) and compared to samples from 10 control patients.

Patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage expressed Musashi-2, which was colocalized with the proliferation marker Ki-67. Control patients expressed neither.

Several other stem cell markers were seen on the proliferating cells such as nestin, vimentin, SOX-2, and Musashi-1.

These data are supportive of the concept that during specific types of injury brain stem cells can still repair neural tissue even in the adult. The question is how to increase reparative ability.