Physicians have long known that necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), a potentially lethal inflammatory condition that destroys a premature infant’s intestinal lining, is often connected to the development of severe brain injury in those infants who survive. However, the means by which the diseased intestine “communicates” its devastation to the newborn brain has remained largely unknown.
Now, working with mice, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine and the University of Lausanne in Switzerland have identified that missing link — an immune system cell that they say travels from the gut to the brain and attacks cells rather than protect them as it normally does.
Click here to read full article https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/mouse-study-finds-link-between-gut-disease-and-brain-injury-in-premature-infants
