Deans' stroke musings: Vascular Risks Linked to Brain Health and Cognitive Decline

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Friday, June 14, 2024

Vascular Risks Linked to Brain Health and Cognitive Decline

Nothing useful here; NOTHING on how to get better brain topological resilience! Biomarkers are fucking useless unless they point directly to the EXACT PROTOCOLS that fix those problems!

Vascular Risks Linked to Brain Health and Cognitive Decline

Summary: A new study reveals that brain topological resilience (BTR) negatively correlates with age and vascular risk factors while positively correlating with cognitive function. Researchers analyzed data from two multi-ethnic cohorts, finding that lower BTR is associated with cognitive decline. This study suggests BTR as a significant marker for assessing brain health impacted by vascular risks and atherosclerosis.

Key Facts:

Lower BTR correlates with age and higher vascular risk factors.
Higher BTR is linked to better cognitive function.
BTR serves as a potential biomarker for brain health and cognitive decline.

Source: Science China Press

Existing research indicates that cognitive impairment in late life is the result of a sequence of life-long events, with vascular risk factors playing a crucial role in this process. It is important to develop biomarkers that can detect the early effect of vascular risk factors on the brain.

Brain connectomes introduce integrated-perspective-based measures to quantify and analyze cerebral changes, thereby providing potential biomarkers. However, currently, there is no large-sized, cross-racial database analysis in this field.

This shows brain scans. — In summary, this study integrated neuroimaging and network science methods to propose a brain topological resilience (BTR) metric that reflects the robustness of the brain. Credit: Neuroscience News

This study investigated the relationship between brain topological resilience (BTR), aging, vascular risk factors, atherosclerosis, and cognition in middle-aged and older adults.

Two independent, multi-ethnic, community-based cohorts were utilized in this study: the PolyvasculaR Evaluation for Cognitive Impairment and Vascular Events (PRECISE) database and the MAS database.

Brain structural networks were constructed based on the Brainetome template and diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) data. A combination of k-shell decomposition and node degree centrality was employed to determine the order of targeted attack nodes.

The obtained BTR values were then analyzed to determine associations with age, vascular risk factors (VRF), atherosclerosis (AS), and cognition. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to assess the directed relationships among these variables.

In the PRECISE cohort, BTR exhibited a negative correlation with age (R = -0.342, P < 1×10-16) and a positive correlation with cognition (measured by MoCA scores, R = 0.174, P = 2.22×10-16). This outcome was also validated in the MAS cohort, where it was negatively correlated with age (R = -0.173, P = 0.003) and positively correlated with global cognition scores (R = 0.258, P = 2.74×10-5) and MMSE (R = 0.185, P = 0.003).

Significant and negative correlations were found between BTR and both weighted VRF (R = -0.109, P = 2.51×10-7) and AS scores (R = -0.131, P = 6.25×10-10) in the PRECISE cohort. In the MAS cohort, there was a negative correlation between BTR and weighted VRF scores (R = -0.187, P = 0.004).

Results of SEM analyses showed that the controlling effect of volume, the pathways from age (standardized Β = -0.255, FDR-corrected P < 1×10-16), weighted VRF (standardized Β = -0.050, FDR-corrected P = 0.031) and weighted AS (standardized Β=-0.047, FDR-corrected P = 0.042) to BTR were statistically significant. The path from BTR to MoCA score was also significant (standardized Β=0.051, FDR-corrected P = 0.039).

In summary, this study integrated neuroimaging and network science methods to propose a brain topological resilience (BTR) metric that reflects the robustness of the brain.

Furthermore, this study investigated whether variables such as aging, vascular risk factors, and atherosclerosis lead to cognitive decline by affecting BTR. SEM supported pathways in which BTR mediated the effect of aging and atherosclerosis on cognition, even after controlling for the effects of brain volume. This study suggested that BTR is a significant marker that reflects the effect of risk factors on cognition.

The results indicated that combining vascular risk factors, atherosclerosis, cognitive function, and this multidisciplinary measure offers a valuable and practical measure for assessing and improving brain health.