Book Description
Abstract: Many diseases of the central nervous system share common pathophysiological processes, such as disruption of the blood-brain barrier (BBB), remodeling of the extracellular matrix (ECM), inflammation and oxidative stress. In the last two decades it has become evident that matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) play an essential role in many of these processes. Several studies have focused on the regulation and expression of these proteases in experimental models of neurologic diseases, revealing that inhibition of MMPs in early stages of disease has the potential to reduce the extent of damage to nervous tissue and improve functional neurologic recovery. Research is currently focusing on defining the role of MMP in specific neurologic conditions to determine whether MMP inhibitors would be appropriate in clinical settings. Selective MMP inhibitors are currently used in research settings. However, commonly used drugs, such as corticosteroids and tetracyclines, are non selective MMPs inhibitors which are used in horses with neurologic disease. These drugs may alter the outcome of said disease by modification of MMP activity. This first part of this work, a review of MMP role in central nervous system diseases, has been made in attempt to translate some of the knowledge from human and laboratory species to the equine species and explore possible treatment options in horses affected by neurologic diseases. In the second part, we evaluated MMP-9 activity in the CSF of 40 horses affected by neurologic diseases. On gelatin zymography all horses had low but present MMP-9 activity.