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Post-mortem assessment in vascular dementia: advances and aspirations

McAleese, KE; Alafuzoff, I; Charidimou, A; De Reuck, J; Grinberg, LT; Hainsworth, AH; Hortobagyi, T; ... Attems, J; + view all (2016) Post-mortem assessment in vascular dementia: advances and aspirations. BMC Medicine , 14 , Article 129. 10.1186/s12916-016-0676-5. Green open access

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Abstract

BACKGROUND: Cerebrovascular lesions are a frequent finding in the elderly population. However, the impact of these lesions on cognitive performance, the prevalence of vascular dementia, and the pathophysiology behind characteristic in vivo imaging findings are subject to controversy. Moreover, there are no standardised criteria for the neuropathological assessment of cerebrovascular disease or its related lesions in human post-mortem brains, and conventional histological techniques may indeed be insufficient to fully reflect the consequences of cerebrovascular disease. DISCUSSION: Here, we review and discuss both the neuropathological and in vivo imaging characteristics of cerebrovascular disease, prevalence rates of vascular dementia, and clinico-pathological correlations. We also discuss the frequent comorbidity of cerebrovascular pathology and Alzheimer’s disease pathology, as well as the difficult and controversial issue of clinically differentiating between Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia and mixed Alzheimer’s disease/vascular dementia. Finally, we consider additional novel approaches to complement and enhance current post-mortem assessment of cerebral human tissue. CONCLUSION: Elucidation of the pathophysiology of cerebrovascular disease, clarification of characteristic findings of in vivo imaging and knowledge about the impact of combined pathologies are needed to improve the diagnostic accuracy of clinical diagnoses.

Type: Article
Title: Post-mortem assessment in vascular dementia: advances and aspirations
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1186/s12916-016-0676-5
Publisher version: http://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-016-0676-5
Language: English
Additional information: © The Author(s). 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.The Author(s). 2016.
Keywords: Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Medicine, General & Internal, General & Internal Medicine, Vascular dementia, Vascular cognitive impairment, Cerebrovascular disease, Cerebrovascular lesions, Neuropathology, Magnetic resonance imaging, Post-mortem MRI, Mixed dementia, SMALL VESSEL DISEASE, WHITE-MATTER HYPERINTENSITIES, CEREBRAL AMYLOID ANGIOPATHY, TRANSIENT ISCHEMIC ATTACK, BLOOD-BRAIN-BARRIER, ALZHEIMERS ASSOCIATION GUIDELINES, MILD COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT, RESONANCE-IMAGING MRI, MAGNETIC-RESONANCE, CEREBROVASCULAR-DISEASE
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology > Brain Repair and Rehabilitation
URI: https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1514603
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