Diseased blood vessels in the brain may contribute more significantly to Alzheimer's disease dementia as per novel research by Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center.
The study found that the worse the brain vessel diseases, the higher the chance of having dementia, which is usually attributed to Alzheimer’s disease. The increase was 20 to 30 percent for each level of worsening severity. The study also found that atherosclerosis and arteriolosclerosis are associated with lower levels of thinking abilities, including in memory and other thinking skills, and these associations were present in persons with and without dementia.
The study by researchers from the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center analyzed medical and pathologic data on 1,143 older individuals who had donated their brains for research upon their deaths out of which 42% with Alzheimer’s disease dementia. Analyses of the brains showed that 39% of study participants had moderate to severe atherosclerosis in the larger arteries at the base of the brain obstructing blood flow and 35% had brain arteriolosclerosis, in which there is stiffening or hardening of the smaller artery walls.
The study was not designed to determine causation of Alzheimer’s dementia, or even whether vascular disease or Alzheimer’s developed first. “But it does suggest that vessel disease plays a role in dementia,” Arvanitakis said. “We found that blood vessel diseases are very common in the brain, and are associated with dementia that is typically attributed to Alzheimer’s disease during life.”
