Bridging Bench to Bedside in Fetal and Neonatal Brain Injury

The immature brain is vulnerable to prenatal and postnatal stresses, which may produce brain damage leading to neurological dysfunction in survivors. This special issue presents new in-sights into the detection, pathophysiology and treatment of developmental brain injuries. Importantly, several papers in this issue report pre-clinical tests of new therapies that prevent injury to the developing brain including erythropoietin, insulin-like growth factor- 1 peptides and antioxidants. New...
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The immature brain is vulnerable to prenatal and postnatal stresses, which may produce brain damage leading to neurological dysfunction in survivors. This special issue presents new in-sights into the detection, pathophysiology and treatment of developmental brain injuries. Importantly, several papers in this issue report pre-clinical tests of new therapies that prevent injury to the developing brain including erythropoietin, insulin-like growth factor- 1 peptides and antioxidants. New insights into how to promote brain repair from neural stem cells is also reported. Information obtained from MRI on human infants, combined with data from several animal models, highlights the effects of hypoxia-ischemia interaction, excitotoxicity, oxidative stress, seizures and inflammation on the outcome of developmental brain injury and ultimate neurological outcome. This publication is recommended to both clinicians and basic scientists, who are interested in the developing nervous system, its vulnerability to various pathophysiological processes, and the eventual consequences for neurological development.