Detection of Apoptosis in the Developing Brain

Pediatric drugs that are used as sedatives/anesthetics (SADs) and antiepileptics (AEDs) in neonatal and pediatric medicine can be harmful to the developing brain. They have been shown to cause widespread cell death, impair synaptic maturation and plasticity and inhibit neurogenesis in the brain. Furthermore, retrospective clinical studies raise serious concerns that exposure of human infants to these classes of drugs may lead to neurocognitive and behavioral disorders.
Here we will use diffusion-weighted MRI and high-frequency ultrasound, two modalities that non-invasively detect apoptosis in cancer, to study apoptotic cell death in the brains of infant non-human primates exposed to sevoflurane anesthesia.