Cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL) is a hereditary cerebral small vessel disease (cSVD) linked to NOTCH3 mutations and leading to the early onset of stroke and vascular cognitive impairment. Neuroimaging features of CADASIL include extensive white matter hyperintensity, lacunes, cerebral microbleeds and enlarged perivascular spaces. Researchers from the Rotterdam study recently proposed a MRI-based cSVD Score reflecting the overall burden of cerebrovascular injury (Yilmaz et al., 2018). Here, we explored the relevance of this cSVD Score in distinguishing CADASIL subjects from non-carriers and its relationships to cognition.
We evaluated 26 NOTCH3 mutation carriers and 25 non-carriers from large Colombian families. Of the CADASIL subjects, 4 had previous strokes (symptomatic) and 22 had no history of strokes (asymptomatic). All subjects underwent a 3T MRI and a neuropsychological evaluation. Structural MRI markers of cSVD, as well as the cSVD Score, were quantified in each subject following established protocols.
Demographic, cognitive and neuroimaging features across groups are presented in Table 1. The cSVD Score significantly differed between groups, after adjusting for age (Figure 1-A). In CADASIL subjects, the cSVD Score was negatively related to performance in Memory, Processing Speed, Executive Function, after accounting for age and education (Figure 1-B).
These results suggest that the cSVD Score could be a useful marker of disease severity in CADASIL. Longitudinal studies are now needed to determine if this score allows predicting clinical outcomes in CADASIL, such as stroke or dementia.
Arterial Stiffness Is Associated With Basal Ganglia Enlarged Perivascular Spaces and Cerebral Small Vessel Disease Load
