Small vessel disease in the brain. Hypotension and hypertension as causes of cognitive decline and dementia.
Description: Vascular dementia accounts for one third of dementia but few studies have focused on small vessel disease as the cause of cognitive decline and dementia. Vacular mechanisms are unclear and almost no gene marker related to cerebral autoregulation have been identified.Mechanisms for vasular dysregulation,both hypotension and hypertension(HT) and associations to cognitive decline and dementia will be explored in three longitudinal studies on the elder population,GÅS-SNAC (n=2931),Epihealth (n=25 000) and 1914-års män(n=500).Perfusion MRI is used in a subset to improve diagnostics to detect early signs of hypoperfusion in prefrontal areas,often affected by small vessel disease and related to executive dysfunction.Cerebral autoregulation is followed through transcranial doppler of cerebral media artery during tilting combined with 24 h ECG/BP and related to cognitive function assessed by 14 different tests.Genome wide association analyses are performed to identify genotypes for hypotension and impaired autoregulation and tested against executive function tests in Epihealth and 12 year follow up from GÅS-SNAC.Few studies have been done on HT among elder based on present recommendations (140/90mm Hg)despite that half of elder >80yrs are on antiHTtreatment.Knowledge gap exists on specific mechanisms.
Funder: Vetenskapsrådet
Amount: SEK 4,800,000
Funding type: research
Funder scheme: Project grant
Start date: 2018-01-01
End date: 2021-12-31
Investigator: Sölve Elmståhl
Institution: Lund University
Funded outputs count: 38
Funder award ID: 2017-01613
OpenAlex ID: G7776615420