Gadolinium- and water-based blood-brain barrier dysfunction measures in patients with sporadic small vessel disease.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Subtle blood-brain barrier (BBB) leakage has been detected in small vessel disease (SVD). While established methods rely on gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCA), diffusion-weighted arterial spin labelling (DW-ASL) is a promising alternative which assesses water exchange rate (k_w ) without injected contrast. However, DW-ASL has not been widely applied in sporadic SVD. We aimed to determine how k_w varied with GBCA BBB leakage measures, baseline and 1-year change in SVD burden.

Methods

We recruited patients with mild ischaemic stroke (lacunar or cortical) all characterised for SVD features. We assessed k_w using DW-ASL and GBCA measures of BBB leakage (permeability-surface area product (PS), blood plasma

SUBMITTER: Stringer MS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12860635 | biostudies-literature | 2026

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature