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Why does chemo not travel to the head?


the nurses who treated me said that is why cancer above the neck is treated with radiation but they could not explain why

Because of something called the blood-brain barrier..

Here's a link with more info
http://www.cancerhelp.org.uk/help/defaul...

Pretty much, the brain has it's own filter that doesn't allow chemicals to cross into it. Chemotherapy is based on chemicals thus can be ineffective to treat brain tumors..

And, here's more info..
http://www.tbts.org/itemDetail.asp?categ...

it has been some 10 years since I did my degree in chemistry, and so my recollection of the year I did of pharmacology is a bit foggy, but from what I can recall, it is that the drugs they use in chemotherapy travel directly to the site of the tumour, but are inert when administered. It is the low level doses of radiation that activate them, allowing them to fight the cancer effectively, and the radiation can thus be targeted directly at the tumour.

The epithelial cells in the brain are very close together which makes the "blood-brain" barrier so effective to substances that could harm it. That is why brain infections are very rare because the molecules of the infecting agent are too large to cross. This also brings up the point that, if by chance someone does get an infection in the brain, the drugs to treat it will also not cross the barrier.

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