McAleese, K.E., Alafuzoff, I., Charidimou, A. et al. (18 more authors) (2016) Post-mortem assessment in vascular dementia: advances and aspirations. BMC Medicine, 14 (1). p. 129. ISSN 1741-7015
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.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and 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. |
Keywords: | Cerebrovascular disease; Cerebrovascular lesions; Magnetic resonance imaging; Mixed dementia; Neuropathology; Post-mortem MRI; Vascular cognitive impairment; Vascular dementia |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health (Sheffield) > Department of Neuroscience (Sheffield) The University of Sheffield > Sheffield Teaching Hospitals |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 21 Sep 2016 09:02 |
Last Modified: | 21 Sep 2016 09:02 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12916-016-0676-5 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | BioMed Central |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1186/s12916-016-0676-5 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:104940 |