A 15-year-old girl is taken to see a physician because of a sore throat. An antibiotic is prescribed that can enter most tissues of the body but cannot penetrate the blood-brain barrier. The blood-brain barrier can be attributed primarily to which cell type?: (A) Astrocyte, (B) Endothelial cell, (C) Glial cell, (D) Macrophage
Answer is B. The endothelial cells lining all blood vessels in the brain constitute the blood-brain barrier. Tight junctions between endothelial cells forms blood-brain barrier. The purpose of the blood-brain barrier is to protect the chemical environment of the brain from rapid changes in composition that occur normally in the rest of the body fluids.