Cerebral autoregulation and white matter lesions in Parkinson's disease and multiple system atrophy

Abstract

Cerebral autoregulation is a complex homeostatic process which ensures constant brain blood supply, despite continuous blood pressure fluctuations. Recent evidence suggests that in Parkinson's disease (PD) and multiple system atrophy (MSA) this process is maintained in a broadened range of blood pressure values, consistent with an adaptive mechanism to increase tolerance to orthostatic hypotension. In PD and MSA orthostatic hypotension may be accompanied by supine hypertension which has been recently linked with cerebral white matter lesions in these conditions. We hypothesize that cerebral autoregulation adaptation to chronic orthostatic hypotension may be directly related with an increase susceptibility to hypertensive peaks. Evaluation of cerebral autoregulatory behavior may thus represent a novel approach to simultaneously target orthostatic symptoms and silent end-organ damage in alpha-synucleinopathies, with a beneficial impact on cerebrovascular and cognitive outcome.

Keywords: Cerebral autoregulation; Cerebral white matter lesions; Multiple system atrophy; Orthostatic hypotension; Parkinson's disease.