Breakthrough on Causes of Dementia
Published: October 28, 2004
Doctors studying dementia have made a major breakthrough into understanding the causes of the condition which blights the lives of millions of elderly people, they said today.
Experts in Scotland believe mental senility is linked to enlarged channels around the blood vessels in the brain.
Previous research has linked dementia with shrinkage of the brain and changes in the organ’s white matter “wiring”.
But the ground-breaking study from the University of Edinburgh has found that abnormal channels, known as enlarged perivascular spaces, are also to blame.
The team carried out brain scans to measure the mental ability and extent of perivascular spaces in 100 healthy elderly male volunteers from the city.
They found that subjects with more of these abnormal channels had a lower mental ability.
The experts believe the enlarged channels are caused by brain shrinkage or damage to brain tissue around blood vessels.
Dr Alasdair MacLullich, of the university’s Geriatric Medicine Unit, and Professor Joanna Wardlaw, from the Brain Imaging Research Centre for Scotland, led the study.
Dr MacLullich said: “These findings mean we should certainly be looking more closely at enlarged perivascular spaces as a cause of dementia and other mental decline in old age.
“They raise the interesting possibilities that there may be substances in the blood, such as cholesterol or sugar levels, or even blood pressure itself, that may contribute to memory decline as people become older.
“This puts a spotlight on blood vessels, so we are now working to find out how these changes around the brain’s blood vessel supply arise.”
Perivascular spaces are rare in young healthy adults but are commonly seen in the brain scans of older people.
They are also often found in patients suffering from conditions such as diabetes, Parkinson’s Disease and high blood pressure.
The experts said the study – published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry – was the world’s first into a link between perivascular spaces and dementia.
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