Estimating cerebral microinfarct burden from autopsy samples.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To estimate whole-brain microinfarct burden from microinfarct counts in routine postmortem examination.

Methods

We developed a simple mathematical method to estimate the total number of cerebral microinfarcts from counts obtained in the small amount of tissue routinely examined in brain autopsies. We derived estimates of total microinfarct burden from autopsy brain specimens from 648 older participants in 2 community-based clinical-pathologic cohort studies of aging and dementia.

Results

Our results indicate that observing 1 or 2 microinfarcts in 9 routine neuropathologic specimens implies a maximum-likelihood estimate of 552 or 1,104 microinfarcts throughout the brain. Similar estimates were obtained when validating in larger sampled brain volumes.

Concl

SUBMITTER: Westover MB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3662273 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature