Award for study on white matter lesions, lacunar infarcts and brain atrophy

At the recent International Congress on Vascular Dementia in Hungary, PhD student Auke Appelman won the first prize for his poster presentation on the SMART-MR study. In this study, the independent association of white matter lesions and lacunar infarcts with brain atrophy was investigated in patients with manifest arterial disease.

Within the SMART-MR study, a prospective cohort study among patients with manifest arterial disease, cross-sectional analyses were performed on the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data of 992 patients (average age 58±10 years, 79% male) without cortical infarcts. It was concluded that white matter lesions are associated with all measures of brain atrophy, independent of the presence of lacunar infarcts and vascular risk factors. Also, lacunar infarcts appear to be independently related to more global and subcortical atrophy, but not to cortical atrophy.