Brain Estrogen is Key to Brain Protection when Oxygen is Low

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

When the brain isn't getting enough oxygen, estrogen produced by neurons in both males and females hyperactivates another brain cell type called astrocytes to step up their usual support and protect brain function.

In the face of low brain oxygen that can occur with stroke or other brain injury, these astrocytes, star-shaped brain cells that help give the brain its shape and regularly provide fuel and other support to neurons, should become "highly reactive," increasing cell signaling, releasing neuroprotective factors and clearing neurotoxins, scientists report in The Journal of Neuroscience.

Astrocytes also should start producing protective estrogen, but it's neurons' producing estrogen that is critical to the protective cascade, they report.

"Astrocytes are always there and hovering and supporting," says Dr. Darrell W. Brann, neuroscientist and Virendra B. Mahesh Distinguished Chair in Neuroscience in the Department of Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.

"When something bad happens, they are supposed to go into overdrive, get big and pushy, but this work suggests that you have to have neural estrogen for that to happen," Brann says.

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.