Europe PMC

This website requires cookies, and the limited processing of your personal data in order to function. By using the site you are agreeing to this as outlined in our privacy notice and cookie policy.

Structure and function of the blood-brain barrier.

Author information

Affiliations

  • 1. King's College London, Blood-Brain Barrier Group, Pharmaceutical Science Division, Hodgkin Building, Guy's Campus, London SE1 1UL, UK.
      Authors
    • Abbott NJ 1
    (1 author)

ORCIDs linked to this article

Neurobiology of Disease, 05 Aug 2009, 37(1):13-25
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nbd.2009.07.030 PMID: 19664713 

Review

Abstract 

Neural signalling within the central nervous system (CNS) requires a highly controlled microenvironment. Cells at three key interfaces form barriers between the blood and the CNS: the blood-brain barrier (BBB), blood-CSF barrier and the arachnoid barrier. The BBB at the level of brain microvessel endothelium is the major site of blood-CNS exchange. The structure and function of the BBB is summarised, the physical barrier formed by the endothelial tight junctions, and the transport barrier resulting from membrane transporters and vesicular mechanisms. The roles of associated cells are outlined, especially the endfeet of astrocytic glial cells, and pericytes and microglia. The embryonic development of the BBB, and changes in pathology are described. The BBB is subject to short and long-term regulation, which may be disturbed in pathology. Any programme for drug discovery or delivery, to target or avoid the CNS, needs to consider the special features of the BBB.

Full text links 

Read article at publisher's site: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nbd.2009.07.030

References 

Articles referenced by this article (168)

Show 10 more references (10 of 168)

Citations & impact 

Impact metrics

2,384
Citations
Jump to Citations

Citations of article over time

Alternative metrics

Altmetric item for https://www.altmetric.com/details/1629035
Altmetric
Discover the attention surrounding your research
https://www.altmetric.com/details/1629035

Smart citations by scite.ai
Smart citations by scite.ai include citation statements extracted from the full text of the citing article. The number of the statements may be higher than the number of citations provided by EuropePMC if one paper cites another multiple times or lower if scite has not yet processed some of the citing articles.
Explore citation contexts and check if this article has been supported or disputed.
https://scite.ai/reports/10.1016/j.nbd.2009.07.030

Supporting
Mentioning
Contrasting
20
3421
1

Article citations

Go to all (2,384) article citations

Other citations

Similar Articles 

To arrive at the top five similar articles we use a word-weighted algorithm to compare words from the Title and Abstract of each citation.