Atherosclerosis: The Culprit and Co-victim of Vascular Dementia

Ya-Ting Huang; Fen-Fang Hong; Shu-Long Yang

doi:10.3389/fnins.2021.673440

Atherosclerosis: The Culprit and Co-victim of Vascular Dementia

Front Neurosci. 2021 Aug 6:15:673440. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2021.673440. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Ya-Ting Huang^{1

2}, Fen-Fang Hong³, Shu-Long Yang^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physiology, College of Medicine, Nanchang University, Nanchang, China.
² Queen Marry College, School of Medicine, Nanchang University, Nanchang, China.
³ Experimental Center of Pathogen Biology, Nanchang University, Nanchang, China.
⁴ Department of Physiology, Fuzhou Medical College, Fuzhou, China.

Abstract

Vascular dementia (VD), a cerebrovascular disease which causes cognitive impairment, is one of the significant factors that affects the quality of senectitude. Atherosclerosis (AS) is a chronic inflammatory syndrome and closely associated with VD. Analyzing the role of AS in VD contribute greatly to its early detection and prevention, but their relationship has not been integrated into a complete network. This review summarizes AS biomarkers as VD predictors for the first time and describes the direct mechanisms of AS causing VD from five aspects: vascular morphogenesis, hemodynamic change, neurovascular unit damage (NVU), oxidative stress, and microRNA (miRNA). Finally, it discriminates the relationship between AS and VD in common risk factors which can be disease or some molecules. In particular, these data imply that the role of AS in VD is not only a pathogenic factor but also a comorbidity in VD. This review aims to bring new ideas for the prediction and treatment of VD.

Keywords: atherosclerosis; atherosclerosis biomarkers; common risk factors; hypoperfusion; vascular disease.

Publication types

Review