Stress may disturb the blood-brain barrier

Severe stress can disturb the blood-brain barrier that protects the brain from drugs and other chemicals that enter the circulatory system, say Israeli researchers. Their discovery may help to explain why soldiers given the drug pyridostigmine to protect against nerve gas poisoning during the Gulf war reacted differently from soldiers given the drug in peace time.

Professor Hermona Soreq, a neurobiologist at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, and Dr Alon Friedman, a neurosurgeon at Beersheba's Soroka Hospital who was a doctor …