Impact of hypertension on cerebral small vessel disease: A post-mortem study of microvascular pathology from normal-appearing white matter into white matter hyperintensities.

ABSTRACT: Cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) is diagnosed through imaging hallmarks like white matter hyperintensities (WMH). Novel hypotheses imply that endothelial dysfunction, blood-brain barrier (BBB) disruption and neurovascular inflammation contribute to conversion of normal-appearing white matter (NAWM) into WMH in hypertensive individuals. Aiming to unravel the association between chronic hypertension and the earliest WMH pathogenesis, we characterized microvascular pathology in periventricular NAWM into WMH in post-mortem brains of individuals with and without hypertension. Our second aim was to delineate the NAWM-WMH transition from NAWM towards the center of WMH using deep learning, refining WMH segmentation capturing increases in FLAIR signal. Finally, we aimed to demonstrate whether th

SUBMITTER: Sole-Guardia G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11994636 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature