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Cerebral Small Vessel Disease and Cognition
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Omar El Serafy1, Mohammed El Sayed
Al Awwady1,
Mona AF Nada1, Amr Hassan1,
Ahmed Reda2
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Department of Neurology, Cairo University1, Om Al Masryeen Hospital2, Ministry of Health; Egypt
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ABSTRACT
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Background: Cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) is one of the frequent findings on
CT and MRI scans of elderly people and is related to vascular risk factors,
cognitive and motor impairment. Objective: The objective of the present
study is to evaluate cognitive impairment associated with small vessel disease.
Methods: This is a case-control study where consecutive non-demented
patients with confluent leukoaraiosis on MRI were recruited to assess the
cognitive impairment associated with SVD (n =40), and underwent neuropsychological
assessment and multimodal brain MRI. Control group included healthy volunteers
who were age, sex and education level matched (n=10). Results: The
performance of the patient group was lower than the control group in
Addenbrooke test, verbal fluency test, trail making B test, Digit symbol test (DST),
Paired Associate Learning Test (PALT) and block design test and these
statistical differences were highly significant (P-value < 0.01), a
statistically significant difference between the 2 groups was also found in
trail making A test (P-value < 0.05). The duration of the vascular risk
factors of the SVD (hypertension and diabetes mellitus) and the grades of
Fazeka's scale were negatively correlated with the performance of the patient
group in all of the cognitive tests Conclusion: Cerebral Small vessel
disease is associated with cognitive impairment affecting mainly verbal
fluency, language skills and executive functions. [Egypt
J Neurol Psychiat Neurosurg. 2015; 52(1): 75-82]
Key Words: Small vessel disease, vascular cognitive
impairment
Correspondence to Amr Hasan El Sayed Mohammed,
Neurology Department, Cairo
University.Tel.: +201006060809. Email: amrhasanneuro@kasralainy.edu.eg
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