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Exposure To Lead Can Affect Ability of Brain to Respond to Later Brain Injuries

By Michael Kaplen

Exposure to lead can hinder the brain's ability to recover from injury, a recent study in laboratory animals shows.

Researchers at Jefferson Medical College wanted to know if it was possible that lead might alter the potential for plasticity, the ability of the brain to compensate for an injury.  Their finding is reported in the latest issue of the journal, NeuroToxicology.

They studied young rats that were fed a diet supplemented with lead and compared them to others on a diet without lead. They found that even brief exposures to lead affected the ability of the brain to respond to later brain insults.

It is well known that lead exposure had detrimental effects on learning and memory.  This new study implicates lead as a cause of the failure of the brain to properly heal following insults later in life including traumatic brain injury.

Full post as published by Brain Injury News and Information on December 06, 2007 (boomark / email).