Leuko-Araiosis, Cerebral Atrophy, and Cerebral Perfusion in Normal Aging

Neuropsychological Impairment Correlates With Hypoperfusion and Hypometabolism but Not With Severity of White Matter Lesions on MRI in Patients With Cerebral Microangiopathy

“…Next, Spearman correlation coefficients were calculated between degree of atrophy and microangiopathy, global VCBF/MRGlu, NPSsum1, and NPSsum2. Finally, we did principal-component factor analysis with these 6 variables to investigate multivariate correlations between white matter lesions, atrophy, neuropsychological performance, and VCBF/MRGlu (the ratio of number of variables [6]/number of patients [57] Ͻ1/3 is still acceptable for factor analysis 26 ).…”

“…[5][6][7][8][9] Furthermore, DeCarli et al 44 showed that in healthy subjects (aged 19 to 91 years) DWML were correlated with reduced rMRGlu. In contrast, on the basis of data obtained with retinal video fluorescence angiography, Schneider et al 11 questioned a causal relationship between white matter hypodensity on CT (leukoaraiosis) and microangiopathic changes.…”

“…This does not agree with the studies cited above. [5][6][7][8][9]44,45 The latter, however, failed to consider brain atrophy in their assessment of rCBF/rMRGlu, even though brain atrophy exists in most patients with leukoaraiosis. 2,46 Since at this time no generally accepted score for quantifying the severity of DWML on MRI exists, we developed a special microangiopathy score for our study, as mentioned earlier.…”

“…To correct for photon attenuation, transmission scans using 8 68 Ge ring sources were done. Input function was calculated by determining the plasma activity of arterialized venous blood samples over time (2,4,6,8,10,15,20,30,45, and 60 minutes following injection of 18-FDG). Reconstruction of 45 transverse attenuation-corrected slices of 3.375-mm thickness each in a 128ϫ128 matrix was done with a Hanning filter (cutoff frequency 0.5).…”

“…[5][6][7][8][9] The aim of the present study was to ascertain whether CMA is accompanied by changes in rCBF and rMRGlu in either the white matter or the cortex or both and to determine how closely these changes correlate with the presence and type of neuropsychological deficits.…”