Age-related normative changes in cerebral perfusion: Data from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA)

You just might want to know your cerebral blood flow compared to normal. If not normal then your doctor needs to initiate protocols to bring it into range.

Age-related normative changes in cerebral perfusion: Data from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA)

 

Author links open overlay panelCaoilfhionn NíLeidhin^abJasonMcMorrow^abDanielCarey^acLouiseNewman^acWilbyWilliamson^adAndrew J.Fagan^eMichael A.Chappell^fghiRose AnneKenny^acdjJames F.Meaney^abSilvin P.Knight^ac

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.117741Get rights and content

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Highlights

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Normative values presented for cerebral blood flow measured using 3T pCASL-MRI.

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Data from 468 community-dwelling adults aged 54–84 years.

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Cerebral blood flow decreased by 0.2 ml/100 g/min for each year increase in age.

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Cerebral blood flow was 3.1 ml/100 g/min higher in females.

Abstract

Objective

To establish normative reference values for total grey matter cerebral blood flow (CBF_GM) measured using pseudo-continuous arterial spin labelling (pCASL) MRI in a large cohort of community-dwelling adults aged 54 years and older.

Background

Quantitative assessment of CBF_GM may provide an imaging biomarker for the early detection of those at risk of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and dementia. However, the use of this method to differentiate normal age-related decline in CBF_GM from pathological reduction has been hampered by the lack of reference values for cerebral perfusion.

Methods

The study cohort comprised a subset of wave 3 (2014–2015) participants from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA), a large-scale prospective cohort study of individuals aged 50 and over. Of 4309 participants attending for health centre assessment, 578 individuals returned for 3T multi-parametric MRI brain examinations. In total, CBF_GM data acquired from 468 subjects using pCASL-MRI were included in this analysis. Normative values were estimated using Generalised Additive Models for Location Shape and Scale (GAMLSS) and are presented as percentiles, means and standard deviations.

Results

The mean age of the cohort was 68.2 ± 6.9 years and 51.7% were female. Mean CBF_GM for the cohort was 36.5 ± 8.2 ml/100 g/min. CBF_GM decreased by 0.2 ml/100 g/min for each year increase in age (95% CI = −0.3, −0.1; p ≤ 0.001) and was 3.1 ml/100 g/min higher in females (95% CI = 1.6, 4.5; p ≤ 0.001).

Conclusions

This study is by far the largest single-site study focused on an elderly community-dwelling cohort to present normative reference values for CBF_GM measured at 3T using pCASL-MRI. Significant age- and sex-related differences exist in CBF_GM.