A new study by investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare, reveals insights that could lead to new treatments for a serious brain bleeding condition that’s common in newborns with very low birth weight. The findings are published in Brain.
“Intraventricular hemorrhage, which is characterized by bleeding inside or around the spaces in the brain that contain the cerebral spinal fluid, occurs in about one-third of newborns with very low birth weight, and more than half of survivors are neurologically handicapped for life,” said senior author Kevin J. Staley, MD, who is chief of the Division of Pediatric Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital. “The pathophysiology of brain injury leading to intraventricular hemorrhage in prematurely born infants is unclear—therefore, providing effective intervention is challenging.”
Research from animal models suggests that brain tissue shrinkage, with subsequent stretching of blood vessels, is an important step in the pathophysiology of intraventricular hemorrhage, but the cause of this shrinkage is unknown.
