Consenting volunteers between 40 and 70 years old with no morbidity, including males, and females who are not pregnant will be recruited for the study. Three volunteers will be enrolled with a reasonable sampling of ethnicities from the Nashville area, and an effort will be made to recruit males and females. The study will be conducted by the Vanderbilt Clinical Research Center (CRC).~Briefly, the three volunteers will be studied at a single dose level. Baseline assessments will be performed, and then each volunteer will be given a single oral dose (550 mg) of 2-HOBA. Ninety minutes after the dose, a lumbar puncture will be performed to obtain cerebrospinal fluid and a blood sample will be collected. 2-HOBA levels will be measured in cerebrospinal fluid and blood samples from this timepoint to assess the ability or orally ingested 2-HOBA to cross the blood brain barrier.
The purpose of this study is to confirm that 2-HOBA crosses the blood brain barrier and to compare blood and cerebrospinal fluid levels of 2-HOBA after a single oral dose.