Background:
About 90% Older people above the age of 65 years present white matter hyperintensities (WMH) of varying severity when undergoing MRI. However, white matter hyperintensities is one of the characteristic in imaging for cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD). The relationship between WMH volume and lacunar stroke is unknown.
Patients and Methods:
A total of 8475 patients with hypertension and WMH on MRI, which were from Nanjing Drum Tower hospital imaging register center from 2011 to 2015, were studied retrospectively. Age between 60 and 85 years without dementia or parkinsonism. The patients were scanned MRI including DWI, T1W, T2W, FLAIR in 1 time each year, acute lacunar stroke is as an endpoint. Patients with Intracranial atherosclerosis in larger arteries were excluded. Areas of supratentorial WMH were semi-automated segmented on FLAIR sequences using MRIcron software. DWI identificates acute lacunar infarct.
Results:
Of 8475 patients, 599 got acute lacunar stroke and accound for 7.07%. A percentage of 82.5 acute lacunar infarctions were located beside periventricular WMH and merge into white matter disease abnormalities. In compared with patients that were spared from any vascular incidents, higher periventricular WMH volumes were found among the 599 patients in baseline FLAIR images (p=0.012). Furthermore, by annual MRI scan, about 612 patients were found with increased volumes of periventricular WMH, and 86.5% of the patients ended up with acute lacunar stroke. While in patients with stable WMH volumes, only 0.89% of them ended up with vascular incidents. Logistic regression analysis demonstrated that only periventricular WMH volumes were associated with incidence of acute lacunar stroke (p=0.001), while no association of aging (p=0.275) and hypertension (p=0.146) were found.
Conclusion:
This study indicates that periventricular WMH volumes on FLAIR are independent predictors for acute lacunar stroke and suggest that therapies aimed at reducing progression of white matter hyperintensities via regulating hyperintensities and end-arteriole damage may protect against acute lacunar stroke in clinic.
Small-vessel disease is associated with poor long-term poststroke survival
