Central nervous barrier permeability in mental and nervous diseases. S. and L. Prusak (Warsz. Czasop. Lek., 1927, nos. 3-4)

The study of the permeability of the central nerve barrier (barrière hémato-encéphalique Sternow'a and Gautier) is increasingly acquiring the rights of citizenship among other clinical methods. For this study, it is possible to use either such substances that in a healthy person never pass into the cerebrospinal fluid and whose presence in the latter indicates damage to the barrier (Weil-Kafki gemolysin test, Flatau's chromo-neuroscopic test), or such that in pathological conditions pass either in increased versus normal amounts or in decreased amounts. The second category includes Walter's bromine test. Walter uses sodium bromide, the content of which he determines colorimetrically with gold chloride. Having determined by this method the bromine content in the cerebrospinal fluid and in the blood serum, he divides the figure expressing the bromine saturation of the blood serum by the figure expressing the bromine content in the cerebrospinal fluid, and by this he determines the barrier permeability index.