Small vessel cerebrovascular disease

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Vascular cognitive impairment (VCI) encompasses a wide range of cognitive disorders stemming from cerebrovascular issues, such as strokes or small vessel disease. These conditions often pose challenges to traditional diagnostic approaches due to their multifactorial nature and varied clinical presentations. Recently, next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have provided detailed analyses of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in the molecular pathobiology of VCI. These new findings help with molecular-based diagnostics and treatments of VCI...

BACKGROUND: Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) is a major cause of maternal morbidity, but its pathophysiology is poorly characterized. We investigated characteristics of pregnancy-associated ICH (P-ICH), compared with ICH in similar aged nonpregnant adults of both sexes. METHODS AND RESULTS: We performed a retrospective analysis of 134 adults aged 18 to 44 years admitted to our center with nontraumatic ICH from January 1, 2012, to December 31, 2021. We compared ICH characteristics among 3 groups: those with P-ICH (pregnant or within 12 months of end of pregnancy); nonpregnant women; and men...

BACKGROUND: Magnetic resonance imaging infarct topography may assist with determining stroke etiology. The influence of diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI)-positive lesions on etiology determination in patients with transient ischemic attack or minor stroke is not well studied. METHODS AND RESULTS: We prospectively enrolled patients between 2010 and 2017 in 2 studies; participants with a final diagnosis of probable or definite transient ischemic attack or stroke were pooled for analysis...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: To determine the prevalence of silent brain infarction (SBI) and cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD) in adults with atrial fibrillation (AF), coronary artery disease, heart failure or cardiomyopathy, heart valve disease, and patent foramen ovale (PFO), with comparisons between those with and without recent stroke and an exploration of associations between heart disease and SBI/CSVD. METHODS: Medline, Embase, and Cochrane Library were systematically searched for hospital-based or community-based studies reporting SBI/CSVD in people with heart disease...

BACKGROUND: The importance of thromboembolism in the pathogenesis of lacunar stroke (LS), resulting from cerebral small vessel disease (cSVD), is debated, and although antiplatelets are widely used in secondary prevention after LS, there is limited trial evidence from well-subtyped patients to support this approach. We sought to evaluate whether altered anticoagulation plays a causal role in LS and cSVD using 2-sample Mendelian randomization. METHODS: From a recent genome-wide association study (n=81 190), we used 119 genetic variants associated with venous thrombosis at genome-wide significance ( P <5*10-8 ) and with a linkage disequilibrium r2 <0...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Sporadic cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD) is a class of important pathologic processes known to affect the aging brain and to contribute to cognitive impairment. We aimed to identify clinical risk factors associated with postmortem CSVD in middle-aged to older adults. METHODS: We developed and tested risk models for their predictive accuracy of a pathologic diagnosis of nonamyloid CSVD and cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) in a retrospective sample of 160 autopsied cases from the Edinburgh Brain Bank...

OBJECTIVE: Cross-sectional and cohort studies have found insufficient evidence of a causal relationship between sex hormone-binding globulin and ischemic stroke, only associations. Here, we performed a sex-stratified, bidirectional, two-sample Mendelian randomization analysis to evaluate whether a causal relationship exists between sex hormone-binding globulin and ischemic stroke. METHODS: Single-nucleotide polymorphisms associated with sex hormone-binding globulin and ischemic stroke were screened from genome-wide association studies summary data as instrumental variables to enable a bidirectional, two-sample Mendelian randomization study design...

BACKGROUND: Cerebrovascular diseases have emerged as significant threats to human life and health. Effectively segmenting brain blood vessels has become a crucial scientific challenge. We aimed to develop a fully automated deep learning workflow that achieves accurate 3D segmentation of cerebral blood vessels by incorporating classic convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and transformer models. METHODS: We used a public cerebrovascular segmentation dataset (CSD) containing 45 volumes of 1...

BACKGROUND: Lacunes are associated with cognitive impairment. We sought to identify strategic lacune locations associated with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and subtypes of MCI among older adults, and further to examine the role of white matter hyperintensities and perivascular spaces in the association. METHODS: This population-based cross-sectional study included 1230 dementia-free participants in the brain magnetic resonance imaging substudy (2018-2020) in MIND-China (Multimodal Interventions to Delay Dementia and Disability in Rural China)...

BACKGROUND: The disruption of the neurovascular unit (NVU), which maintains the integrity of the blood brain barrier (BBB), has been identified as a critical mechanism in the development of cerebrovascular and neurodegenerative disorders. However, the understanding of the pathophysiological mechanisms linking NVU dysfunction to the disorders is incomplete, and reliable blood biomarkers to measure NVU dysfunction are yet to be established. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to identify biomarkers associated with BBB dysfunction in large vessel disease, small vessel disease (SVD) and vascular cognitive disorders (VCD)...

BACKGROUND: Cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD) is a common chronic progressive disease. It remains unclear whether high gait variability is a marker of cognitive cortical dysfunction. METHODS: This study included 285 subjects (aged from 60 to 85 years, 60.3% female) including 37 controls, 179 presented as Fazekas II, and 69 presented as Fazekas III. The severity of white matter hyperintensities was assessed by the Fazekas Rating Scale. Gait parameters were assessed using a vision-based artificial intelligent gait analyzer...

Atherosclerosis can underly internal carotid artery stenosis (ICAS), a major risk factor for ischemic stroke, as well as small vessel disease (SVD). This study aimed to investigate hemodynamics and structural alterations associated with SVD in ICAS patients. 28 patients with unilateral asymptomatic ICAS and 30 age-matched controls underwent structural (T1-/T2-weighted and diffusion tensor imaging [DTI]) and hemodynamic (pseudo-continuous arterial spin labeling and dynamic susceptibility contrast) magnetic resonance imaging...

Cerebral microbleeds (CMBs) detected on blood-sensitive magnetic resonance imaging sequences are usually a sign of an underlying cerebral small vessel disease such as sporadic cerebral amyloid angiopathy or sporadic nonamyloid small vessel pathology (eg, arteriolosclerosis). Much of the enduring interest in CMBs relates to their high prevalence (partly due to the widespread use of magnetic resonance imaging) in the context of stroke, cognitive impairment and in healthy individuals, and the clinical uncertainties created about the safety of antithrombotic medications due to their association with both future hemorrhagic and ischemic stroke...

BACKGROUND: Recent studies, using diffusion tensor image analysis along the perivascular space (DTI-ALPS), suggest impaired perivascular space (PVS) function in cerebral small vessel disease, but they were cross-sectional, making inferences on causality difficult. We determined associations between impaired PVS, measured using DTI-ALPS and PVS volume, and cognition and incident dementia. METHODS: In patients with lacunar stroke and confluent white matter hyperintensities, without dementia at baseline, recruited prospectively in a single center, magnetic resonance imaging was performed annually for 3 years, and cognitive assessments, including global, memory, executive function, and processing speed, were performed annually for 5 years...

BACKGROUND: Subclinical myocardial injury in form of hs-cTn (high-sensitivity cardiac troponin)  levels has been associated with cognitive impairment and imaging markers of cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) in population-based and cardiovascular cohorts. Whether hs-cTn is associated with domain-specific cognitive decline and SVD burden in patients with stroke remains unknown. METHODS AND RESULTS: We analyzed patients with acute stroke without premorbid dementia from the prospective multicenter DEMDAS (DZNE [German Center for Neurodegenerative Disease]-Mechanisms of Dementia after Stroke) study...

BACKGROUND: The temporal ordering of biomarkers for cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) is important for their use in trials and for the understanding of the pathological cascade of CAA. We investigated the presence and abnormality of the most common biomarkers in the largest (pre)symptomatic Dutch-type hereditary CAA (D-CAA) cohort to date. METHODS: We included cross-sectional data from participants with (pre)symptomatic D-CAA and controls without CAA. We investigated CAA-related cerebral small vessel disease markers on 3T-MRI, cerebrovascular reactivity with functional 7T-MRI (fMRI) and amyloid-β40 and amyloid-β42 levels in cerebrospinal fluid...

INTRODUCTION: Ultrasonography (US) is used as a real-time dynamic imaging modality during neurosurgery. A novel Doppler US technique, Superb Microvascular Imaging (SMI), can be used to visualize low-velocity flow of small vessels at high resolution with high frame rates. We visualized vessel flow using this US SMI technique and contrast agent during cerebrovascular surgery. METHODS: Forty-three patients with an unruptured cerebral aneurysm (control), ischemic and hemorrhagic moyamoya disease, carotid artery stenosis, hemangioblastoma, severe stenosis of the middle cerebral artery, venous angioma, and intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) underwent neurosurgery with US SMI monitoring using a contrast agent...

BACKGROUND: Previous studies suggest an association between schizophrenia and stroke, but no studies have investigated stroke subtypes. We examined potential causal associations between schizophrenia and a range of atherosclerotic, embolic, and hemorrhagic stroke outcomes. METHODS AND RESULTS: Two-sample Mendelian randomization analyses were conducted. The summary-level data (restricted to European ancestry) were obtained for schizophrenia and stroke: ischemic stroke, large-artery stroke, small-vessel stroke, cardioembolic stroke, and intracerebral hemorrhage...

Age-associated cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD) represents a clinically heterogenous condition, arising from diverse microvascular mechanisms. These lead to chronic cerebrovascular dysfunction and carry a substantial risk of subsequent stroke and vascular cognitive impairment in aging populations. Owing to advances in neuroimaging, in vivo visualization of cerebral vasculature abnormities and detection of CSVD, including lacunes, microinfarcts, microbleeds and white matter lesions, is now possible, but remains a resource-, skills- and time-intensive approach...